When we start reading a story, we read it from the perspective of the narrator. Whether it’s a third person or first person narrator, the story is bound by them. It is they who introduce the characters, tell us about everything that’s going on and keep our interest to the maximum.

There are of course reliable and unreliable narrators. There are stories where the narrative moves in a truthful manner. The one telling the story is either omnipresent or when it’s a first person story, they stay truthful to the events.

Then there is the “unreliable narrator”, a term popularized by critic Wayne C. Booth. It refers to a storyteller whose credibility is compromised. As a reader you start believing every word being said when suddenly you start feeling that something is off. There will be contradictions and missing details and soon enough you’ll realise that they are not being completely truthful. So now, you become an investor from a passive reader and this adds to the thrill of reading.

So how does unreliable narrator work in a story? Well, it’s all about good writing. At first they gain your trust and then start dropping little herrings either on purpose or unknowingly to misguide you. This is what makes reading such books fun.

Some of the books with unreliable narrators are:

• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins: Rachel’s narration leaves more holes than clear up the air. The gaps in her memory make us constantly reassess the situation.
• Wuthering Heights by Emile Brontë: Nelly as a narrator is extremely judgemental and biased which may have affected her recounting the events correctly and objectively.
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn: Amy Dunne is a master class in deception and this can be seen throughout her narrative.
• The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh: The narrator reconstructs memories his own and others’. But memory here is porous, shifting across time and borders, making reliability feel almost impossible.
• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga: Balram Halwai writes his story as a series of letters and you can tell he’s shaping the narrative to suit himself. He’s charming, brutally honest and also self-serving. 

What makes them interesting is not that the narrator is lying. What really happens is that memory can sometimes by unreliable, identity is unstable and truth depends on the person telling the story.

This post is a part of Blogchatter A2Z Challenge 2026.