I recently read the worst book ever, incidentally written by the worst author ever. I hated it so much I also purchased the audiobook, which was undoubtedly the worst listen ever voiced over by the worst narrator ever.
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10x Best Reader Ever Award
12x Best Reviewer Ever Award
Do you know this for sure? Or is this just something that you imagined in your own life and now you're reporting this as if it were real life experience?
I mean... I cannot really get behind a narrator who is not unreliable. Everybody misses things... it is weird to live in a world where you expect to be able to see everything
I know this can be an unpopular opinion but I totally agree. I don’t want to figure out the truth through your crazy views, I’m crazy enough on my own. Just tell me what’s happening 😂😂
Helpful definition
The unreliable narrator gives clues in the story, sometimes not til the end & you have to go back & recognise the ambiguity & how you, the reader, permitted this lie to go unchecked, sometimes just by hints in the story leaving you guessing
The best novels have unreliable narrators. The story is there but you have to use the narration to see the truth. The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, Lolita, Heart of Darkness, The Quiet American, The Life of Pi, I could go on. You have to take the provided narrative & consider the truth
Oh no! Unreliable narrator is like my second favorite literary device. Whatever that thing is where the story switches back and forth between a present where the past is unknowable and the actual past that the narrator can't see but we can is probably my first.
Only a few pop into my head offhand. A play by Tom Stoppard called Indian Ink is one of my favorites. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. I'm sure there are more, I'd love to get recommendations too ☺️
I started reading a book with an undependable narrator, but I had to quit when he forgot about his characters at the airport and just narrated himself smoking pot and watching Spongebob for 214 pages before he remembered he was supposed to pick up the story, but by then it had just caught an Uber.
Oh so these things I read in this fantasy novel where relayed to me by an in-universe character that may have lied about some of the facts of the story?
Get this trash out of here, I only want to read the real events that happen in this fantasy world!
If you haven't read Louise Penny...they are an excellent series! Book 20 just came out.
If you start on the first, they are able to be ready alone...but, you can keep up with the characters and her character development.
Sometimes the unreliable narrator feels like a betrayal. Sometimes it creeps upon you like suspicion, a foreshadowed sense that you couldn't quiet. And sometimes, they're just plain terrible from the drop and all you can do is root against them at every opportunity.
Really? If it's done well I think an unreliable narrator is the greatest plot twist possible. But it's difficult to pull of well because the reader must feel shocked but intrigued rather than betrayed 🤔
Pues resulta dificil construir un narrador poco fiable. Necesita una trabajo minucioso y pormenorizado. En cualquier momento te puedes sentir traicionado por la honestidad
Depende de las sensaciones que te produzca ese narrador. Si te sientes traicionado, puedes tomarlo como un cambio novedoso y seguir adelante. Yo por costumbre, no dejo ninguna novela. Siempre sigo dándole chance y sin querer, llego hasta el final.
Para esto necesito un traductor 😅 ¡Sé a qué te refieres! La única razón por la que personalmente dejé de leer libros fue porque leerlos se sentía como una tarea en lugar de un placer. Pero puedo entender por qué alguien puede sentirse como OP cuando un narrador poco confiable no está bien hecho
Cualquier libro siempre te descubrirá algo atractivo. Si leyera pensando siempre que voy a obtener placer, no me acercaría al terror de S King o cualquier novela negra
Or they woud see how they were tricked in believing otherwise while narrator told no lies and didn't omit anything of import at all, just didn't accent it.
You're right! I think there are two types of unreliable narrators: The first is the one you described. The second one is the more difficult one because this narrator wants to trick us as well as the characters around them by purposefully twisting the truth. This one might make people feel betrayed
Somehow that remnded me of Herr Moist from Pratchets's Going Postal\Making Money? Most things we know about him either what Lord had accused him of (true or false, we don't know) or what he _thinks_ about himself.
I won't spoil it by revealing the title, but Agatha Christie did it masterfully in at least one book. (I've read relatively few of her books, so I don't know if she managed it more than once. If anyone could, though, it'd be her.)
An unreliable narrator is a character whose POV you’re reading from. This character may describe events and people in the novel incorrectly or with a spin. Think Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” the beating heart is real to him and so we believe everyone hears it but it’s just his hallucination and guilt
Anyway in case any more weird ppl reply me angrily and block me lol pixelatedboat is known for absurdist humour and satire. Nothing he posts should really be taken seriously. He’s also likely making fun of ppl like B3n Sh4rpiro (see his complaint about Glass Onion) with this post
the library is an excellent resource that saves you money and also helps the library stay in operation (their existence depends on how many loans they do!) If i haven't read a book before, i first check the library for a copy. if i enjoyed it enough, i THEN buy myself a copy. no buyer's remorse! :)
how is an unreliable narrator a waste of money? id understand if its just "oooh plot twist the main characcters a villan but here was nothing forshadowingit it" but other than that why would it be a waste?
Oh god. That book. A new girlfriend was reading it and suddenly started asking questions like "would I wait for her?" and if she did something awful would I still love her. We'd been an item for 3 weeks. It didn't last.
Poe’s narrators are almost always unreliable. I think they’re fun. As a middle school ELA teacher, I love introducing students to unreliable narrators lol.
There should be an option of hanging out with the narrator for a while before you commit to buying the book. Lend them some cash, see if they return it; see if they're punctual - that kind of thing...
Well, that kind of books always sit wrong with me. It feels like you should be forgetting and forgiving for every mistakes and stuff badly written from the author just because the narrator is "unreliable". It feels awfuly lazy.
Many replies seem to be belittling the post because ”the unreliable narrator” is an established literary device. But clumsy amateurish inconsistency is not a device, it suggests bad or mediocre writing. Could Mr Bluesky say something more about the unreliable narrator that’s bothering him?
I don’t mind if it’s first person, adds character usually. But god I hate when it’s just a third person normal narrator with no stake in the story but is STILL unreliable. Just exists to set up twists that make no sense.
Seriously? Perhaps the theme of the book is addiction, mental illness, spying, con games, the unreliable narrator livens up so much! Have you never read Edgar Allan Poe?
Seems to me that if you're writing about spying or addiction you want a SUPER-reliable narrator otherwise they could just make stuff up and you'd never know what was real or not.
Unreliable narrators, especially if you know they are unreliable, are kind of a delight? I especially love it if you become slowly aware throughout the course of the book, but you don't know going in.
I've been trying to think of my favorite version of this, and I think it might actually be a film, not a book. Sissy Spacek in Badlands is amazing as the (naive) unreliable narrator.
i LOVE unreliable narrators! the story is compelling to me. its always such a fun little mystery surprise that i get to pick apart to find what really happened. word puzzle make monkey brain go oo aa must ramble to friends about this
But why would you argue this as a response to a post that is a pretty darn funny literary joke? It’s both possible and important for us to enjoy humor amidst darkness.
As movie Johnny Cash said when told not to do something to remind prisoners they’re in prison, “Do you think they forgot?”
You should rarely trust a narrator in the first place in my opinion because most humans have biases and their opinions are opinions, very subjective, and so is mine.
How To Read Novels Like A Professor, by Thomas C. Foster, advises that if the narrator is also a character, they are ALWAYS unreliable: they can't know everything, they lie to you or themselves, are biased, mad, misinformed, etc. That cleared up a lot for me. https://www.harperacademic.com/book/9780061340406/how-to-read-novels-like-a-professor/
Why would a novel having an unreliable narrator be a "waste of money?" I don't get this? Does every story have to follow a similar structure for you to find enjoyment in it?
As a human who maybe sees patterns too often, spoiling the twists at the ends of stories, I freaking love to have a story turned on it’s head 3/4 of the way through and not see it coming. Hate a deus ex machina ending but love a good forshadowed-but-not-obviously-done twist.
let me ask you something: do you think someone who hates unreliable narrators REALLY loves literature, or is it possible they're contradicting themselves, either lying or mistaken about one of them? do you think someone saying both of those things at once is a little bit, perhaps, unreliable?
Because some people are genuinely incapable of putting the pieces together themselves if it isn't spelled out for them its just not worth their time. They want to read but don't want to think. Which is asinine.
The way that I felt this to my core. I just finished a book (borrowed on Libby) and the end was "it's all just a dream." I felt so tricked and enraged. But that's what I get for trusting the narrator who said he was a demon. 🤷♀️
probably comes down to tastes, for me I like it if it's done in a clever way and written well, otherwise it just feels cheap because it can be a very easy way out in the story as an "ending resolution"
Comments
Credentials:
10x Best Reader Ever Award
12x Best Reviewer Ever Award
That's sad.
Scott Brick is a favorite.
Idk, I kinda like unreliable narrators
A few other Agatha Christieies (is that the right plural?
Have that same device
Also 🥂to a fellow fan
>narrator says "I am not mad"
>keep reading
>he's mad
I know the feeling.
If a source lies to or misleads me, I burn it. They’re either a fool to promote something so easily fact checked, or worse…. A tool of oppression.
The unreliable narrator gives clues in the story, sometimes not til the end & you have to go back & recognise the ambiguity & how you, the reader, permitted this lie to go unchecked, sometimes just by hints in the story leaving you guessing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator
Get this trash out of here, I only want to read the real events that happen in this fantasy world!
If you start on the first, they are able to be ready alone...but, you can keep up with the characters and her character development.
Also, she's here on Blue Sky
But sometimes it offers a very different perspective when you realize how flawed the narrator is. I could never hate Holden Caulfield. 🥹 🤺 #booksky
It's looking at you....that $10 on your little stack of novels ...reeeead meeeee
Viscous circle.
And still super-mad, decades later.
Who's going to pay to watch a bunch of words and pages on a giant screen?
Hollywood is getting desperate!
So they're tricking me into paying them to lie to me?!
How is this legal? :(
📚💙
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As movie Johnny Cash said when told not to do something to remind prisoners they’re in prison, “Do you think they forgot?”
https://www.harperacademic.com/book/9780061340406/how-to-read-novels-like-a-professor/
Maybe the word I was looking for is "cool".
But seriously - On All Fours had me wondering about the narrator the whole time. I couldn’t decide.
Overall a win, & also I still love the book & the song
It's pretty sad.
Faulkner solved that I guess haha