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#1 |
Wizard
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The Unreliable Narrator
The first person POV thread reminded me of this. I love books with an unreliable narrator. My favorites are Lolita ("always trust a murderer for a fancy prose style"), Remains of the Day and several others by Ishiguro. Another one I enjoyed is a little-known book called The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester, which owes an obvious debt to Lolita.
Who is your favorite unreliable narrator? eP |
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#2 |
Lunatic
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Life of Pi.
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#3 |
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Life of Pi, definitely!
I didn't care for it, but Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun series, starting with Shadow of the Torturer, is quite popular. |
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#4 |
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One that comes to mind is
Spoiler:
by Agatha Christie.
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#5 |
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#6 |
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"The Little Stranger" by Sarah Waters. It's unsettling and brilliant.
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#7 |
Grand Sorcerer
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Mauriece Leblanc's Arsène Lupin
The first story (and several other stories) in The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar is a good example of this technique.
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#8 |
Wizard
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Life of Pi is one of my favorite books ever! And the others I haven't read, so thanks!!
eP |
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#9 |
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I think an argument could be made that most first person POV novels can be seen as having an unreliable narrator to some extent or another. What gets even more interesting is when you have a third person POV unreliable narrator....
-- Bill |
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#10 |
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One problem with first person narration is that it spoils any spoils any sort of cliff-hangers involving the narrator as you know the narrator has to survive otherwise, the narration would not be happening.
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I was reminded of this list of the Top 10 unreliable narrators. I've enjoyed many of these, not knowing how much to trust the narrator gives the story an edge and I'm drawn to that. Incomplete information is how we operate day-to-day, so it adds realism to a novel.
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#12 | |
Wizard
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Quote:
eP |
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#13 |
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Bill: can you give an example of an unreliable narrator/third person POV? I'm intrigued!
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#14 |
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Or it could be like the movie Fallen where you think you know who the narrator is throughout the movie and then find out at the end that it wasn't who you thought (or at least not who you were supposed to think), and that changes the meaning of most of the narrator's dialogue.
Last edited by Dazrin; 04-18-2012 at 01:52 PM. Reason: oops |
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#15 | |
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Quote:
But that being said, I think any limited third person perspective can be made an unreliable narrator. Of course, the key is that people tend to look at third person narratives as being reliable... so they rarely notice them. -- Bill |
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