The untrustworthy narrator is a weird concept. It seems to me that we are all untrustworthy narrators of our own lives, and we often believe the stories we tell completely. After all, any truth is only a matter of angle. The only principle of my characters' narratives is that they must narrate to the reader the truth they see from their own perspective. No one likes to be cheated, even in fiction. I don't mind the storyteller deceiving himself, but let the reader see clues about the truth.
Ostensibly, my novel Behind Her Eyes tells the story of a love triangle. A cheating and a marriage built on a secret — a must-have in a thriller — is perfect for creating untrustworthy storytellers. After all, in that case, when we play the most immoral version of ourselves – sleeping with someone else's partner behind our backs – or quietly trying to keep our partner, our version of the truth is the most vulnerable. "I can't help it." "I didn't mean it." "It just happened naturally." "I'm going to end it." For the author, it is a very interesting mortar, a fertile land. Let's face it, the "nice guy" story is really boring.
Of course, there are many kinds of untrustworthy storytellers: some deceive themselves, some deceive others, and some deceive themselves. Here are the untrustworthy storytellers that impressed me.
1. Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
The story tells the story of a very unpleasant marriage between Amy and Nick, bringing a new dimension to the psychological thriller novel. The twisting plot isn't my favorite part of the book. What I like most about Nick's part of gradually dissecting himself and turning him from the protagonist at the beginning into a tainted hero.
2. Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
Untrustworthy storytellers and plot reversals always come hand in hand, especially in this novel. When the unsung narrator, who suffers from severe insomnia, meets the mysterious Tyler Durden, the two of them found an underground boxing club open to men who don't want to be defined by work and income. Later, the boxing clubs developed into a national underground organization and formed an army that attempted to overthrow the entire system. A major twist in the plot illustrates that both protagonists are completely untrustworthy.
3. "The Three" – Sarah Lotz
It's a dark story about four plane crashes, in which the three surviving children play the role of untrustworthy storytellers in a completely different way, and the diary, book summaries, and news reports make up a confusing plot. The reader looks at the entire event from the perspective of one character and believes it to be true, and as a result, Lutz presents the reader with the perspective of another character in the same event. If anyone can believe it, it is really difficult to answer who to believe.
4. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
A teenager named Frank Cauldhame, who had no state social security number or birth certificate, was told by his father that if anyone asked him about it, he would have to hide it. Frank, who lives on a desert island far from Scotland, tells his readers frankly that he had already killed three people by the time he was ten. His eldest brother escapes from an insane asylum, his father hides secrets (Frank is actually a girl), and Beetrap is a dark study of abnormal and unreliable families.
5. "Butterfly Dream" (Rebecca) – Daphne du Maurier
The new Lady De Winter herself was not wrong, for she had simply misunderstood the terrible circumstances of the day, but she was still an untrustworthy storyteller and the readers had been misled by her. In search of the secrets of the core of the marriage, Rebecca is a master, and a woman (the new Lady Dewont) is also trying to find out what happened to the former Lady De Vincent (Rebecca).
6 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
His name was Humbert Humbert. He is flattering and tries to draw the reader to his side because he has an unusual crush on a little girl who has not yet reached puberty and wants to prove that he is acting right. It's a nasty but wonderful novel.
7. "The Girl on the Train" – Paula Hawkins
It's hard for me to believe that there are people in the world who haven't read this novel, but the narrative of this novel is very untrusted. In this story full of doubt and murder, the protagonist is untrustworthy, because she is often drunk and temporarily unconscious.
8. "The Tell-Tale Heart" – Edgar Allan Poe
Never trust a storyteller who insists at the outset that he's not crazy. Although this is only a short story, in this terrible story, the effect of guilt on a person's soul will accompany the reader for a long time. Does the leaked heart really hit the floor like a ghost? Or does murder itself create a hell?
Notes on a Scandal – Zoë Heller
At the beginning of the story, the narrator barbara is a sharp-tongued and confident person, and she thinks that she is the only person who can tell this terrible story, in which an art teacher and a minor are engaged in a teacher-student relationship. This is confirming to the reader that this social network, which includes everyone, is likely to be distorted.
10. "The Life of Pi" – Yann Martel
After the teenager's boat sank, he was left in a lifeboat with only a tiger as his companion. Such a beautiful story, but the end makes the reader think, how much of this story is real, and how much of it is a teenager in order to cope with tragedy and difficult struggle to survive and fantasize. The untrustworthiness of the narrator of this story can break your heart.
(Translator: Wang Yunqi)
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