Unreliable narrators

[loveisagirlnameddaisy]

I've taken the plunge and am writing with purpose. I've had a loose idea for ages but don't nothing with it.

I feel fairly sure that I want my main character to be an unreliable narrator, but what do people think about writing this in the third person? That's my comfort zone. However, the more I see this style, the more I notice the stories are written in the first person.

Is it possible to craft a convincing unreliable narrator in the third person?

I’m reminded of Fanny telling Linda’s story in ‘The Pursuit of Love’ or Nellie Dean in ‘Wuthering Heights’. They are mostly in the third person because the narrator is not a main character.

Nothing is impossible if you execute it correctly.

But you do have to initially create the narrator character before the main action.
I’m babbling.
Is that what you meant?

I want the reader to trust the main character's version of events initially, then they'll realise that this isn't accurate through the plot development.

But I don't know how to make that convincing in the third person.

@PotatoPie888

Nothing is impossible if you execute it correctly.

Yes, not sure I've got the skills to do that but all part of the 'journey' 😂

@QueBarbaridad

I’m reminded of Fanny telling Linda’s story in ‘The Pursuit of Love’ or Nellie Dean in ‘Wuthering Heights’. They are mostly in the third person because the narrator is not a main character.

PoL one of my all time favourites. Not sure if this is a direct comparison because Fanny doesn't turn out to be an unreliable narrator, does she? She's just telling Linda's life story.

I’ve come across that in short stories so it can be done: eg in the last line you find out the main character is an old man not a young boy but you have just been presented with his thoughts and feelings.

I’m not sure I know what you mean OP?

I think the thing is that you would start in a normal third person way and then do something that makes readers notice there's a narrator at all, and then your plan of narrating wrongly. E Nesbit is good at this. The Treasure seekers is a good if very over done example - you can definitely see how it's done, so worth a look even if a kids book.

I've recently finished a book called Mrs March by Virginia Feito where this style is pulled off, I think, quite effectively.

As in, like Remains of the Day? So beautifully executed. Not sure how that would play out in third person though...🧐

I think Kazou Ishigoru writes with unreliable narrators and he still teaches an occasional creative writing course at UEA.

Maybe you could look him up? "When we were orphans" is a brilliant example.

*also adore Pursuit of Love

@WillowySnicket great minds...

I enjoy an unreliable narrator.

As a classic Agatha Christie's The Murder of Dan Ackroyd might be worth a re-read too to compare how different people have approached it.

No, Fanny wasn’t a good comparison but I understand better what you want to do now: third person from the point of view of the main character. The main character is unreliable but not actually the narrator - unless they are like Oswald in the Treasure Seekers. That is clever!

Why do you want a third-person unreliable narrator specifically?

It's certainly doable look at Jane Austen's Emma, for instance, which gives us Emma's misreadings of other people's motives and her partialities and grudges via free indirect style but I think the issue with using a 3rd person narrator and wanting to reveal their unreliability via plot events that contradict their version of things is with the issue of psychic distance.

(In Emma, say, we start to grasp that she may have misunderstood what she believes is Mr Elton's interest in her friend Harriet from Mr Knightley's warning, but it's confirmed when Mr Elton gets drunk and starts vocalising his attraction to her when they're alone on a carriage ride.)

If we are very thoroughly inside someone's head, more or less in a stream of consciousness in third person -- how do you then introduce plot events that the reader trusts are 'objectively' happening within that fictional universe of your book, but which contradict your narrator's take on events?

Ie, how do you reveal that your third-person narrator Tom, mourning his beloved wife, reminiscing fondly about their lovely life together and happy marriage, like a grieving widower, beloved of and pitied by all, in fact murdered his wife because of her infidelity? I suppose you could have another narrator, a detective or relative, who suspects, knows or discovers the truth?

Enderby by Faulks would fall within this category I think.

I don't think he does it very well though!

A Pale View Of Hills does it very well. As a pp said Ishiguro is your man for this generally, but Pale View Of Hills is specifically 3rd person unreliable narrator rather than 3rd person narrator who gets facts later on (which I would argue Never Let Me Go is).

I love an unreliable narrator but don't they only work in the first person? The narrator fools the reader (and often herself) using mis-direction.

@UrbanSpaceboy

A Pale View Of Hills does it very well. As a pp said Ishiguro is your man for this generally, but Pale View Of Hills is specifically 3rd person unreliable narrator rather than 3rd person narrator who gets facts later on (which I would argue Never Let Me Go is).

It's brilliant, I agree, but it's first-person (though telling a disguised first-person narrative in the story of the neighbouring woman with the child.)

I love that novel.

Lol sorry I was getting 3rd and 1st mixed up! Both the examples I gave were 1st person.

For 3rd person definitely agree Ishiguro then.

@HollowTalk

I love an unreliable narrator but don't they only work in the first person? The narrator fools the reader (and often herself) using mis-direction.

All the good examples I can think of are first-person like Molly Keane's Good Behaviour, or Marian Keyes' Rachel's Holiday unless there are multiple narrators.

Who may of course also be unreliable, like in Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl.

Wow, thank you for all the replies, wasn't expecting so many, and some great recommendations to check out.

Someone asked why I wanted to write in the third person, I guess it's just my natural writing state - I don't instinctively write in the first person but of course, I can give it a go.

The more I think about it, the more I think I will need to - the whole point of having an unreliable narrator is that we see the unreliable narrative directly through their eyes, not through the eyes of the author. That's why the reader believes in it, and then is wrong-footed when it turns out not to be the case. My unreliable narrator won't be lying, she's just has a distorted view of the world.

@HollowTalk

I love an unreliable narrator but don't they only work in the first person? The narrator fools the reader (and often herself) using mis-direction.

Yes, agree. Off to change my first few chapters!

Daphne du Maurier, my cousin Rachel is my favourite example of unreliable narrator.

I'd have to check back to see how it was written. The clues to the unreliable nature of the narrator were so cleverly done, lots of usually sharp Bookgroup readers completely missed them. 😀