Unreliable narrator

An unreliable narrator is one whose account the reader has reason to doubt, because the narrator is mistaken, self-deceived, deliberately lying, or limited in a way the story quietly signals.

Wayne C. Booth coined the term in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961): a narrator is unreliable when their values or their grasp of events differ from the implied author's, the sense of the author the reader builds from the book as a whole.

A small example of the gap at work:

I am not a jealous man. I only checked her phone because it buzzed, and I only read the message because it was already open, and I only waited up because I was not tired.

Why it works: the first sentence is a claim, and every sentence after it is evidence against the claim. The reader believes the evidence, not the narrator.

Three types

• The limited narrator reports faithfully but does not understand, like a child describing a marriage collapsing around them. Huck Finn, telling his story in Mark Twain's novel, is a classic case: he often misses what the reader sees.
• The self-deceived narrator understands and cannot admit it, like Stevens, the butler in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, or the narrator of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", who keeps insisting on his sanity while describing a murder.
• The deceiving narrator knows exactly what happened and is choosing what to tell you.

How to signal unreliability

The craft requirement is the same in all three cases: the reader needs a route past the narrator. That route is built from discrepancy:

• what other characters do, as opposed to what the narrator says they do
• the subject the narrator keeps returning to
• the detail that does not add up
• the insistence that is too strong for the claim

Without those signals it is not unreliable narration, only a withheld fact. Readers can tell the difference, and the second one feels like a trick.

Common mistakes

• The twist with no clues. If a reread shows no signals, the ending will feel cheap. Plant them early.
• Winking too hard. If every paragraph nudges the reader, the narrator stops being a person and becomes a device.
• Forgetting the reason. A narrator lies, or misunderstands, for a reason rooted in who they are. Make that reason part of the story.

Frequently asked questions

What is an unreliable narrator?

An unreliable narrator is a storyteller the reader cannot fully trust. They may be lying, fooling themselves, or simply not understanding what they describe, and the story gives the reader clues to see past them.

Who coined the term unreliable narrator?

The critic Wayne C. Booth, in his 1961 book The Rhetoric of Fiction.

Can a third-person narrator be unreliable?

Booth's term is mostly used for first-person narrators, but close third person can mislead the same way, because the narration takes on the viewpoint character's mistaken beliefs. The reader sees the world through a mind that has it wrong.