I think it's fairly logical that genre fiction doesn't employ it as often.
Legolas Send a noteboard - 12/03/2010 01:21:06 PM
It strikes me that the majority of genre fiction I've read does not deal a lot with this concept. Sci-fi and fantasy in particular. There seems to be a pretty strong belief that whatever is written is a true account, which is really rather odd considering how fairly cynical we humans can be as readers. I think it's safe to say that, on the whole, realistic fiction is more open about the possibility of the narrator misconstruing something. I don't mean in the sense of "Oh, we thought Xandar the Dark was on our side, but actually he was betraying us!", but rather in the sense of a narrator misremembering a scene or looking at an event and misinterpreting what's going on. Which leads me to my general questions.
After all, many or most books in this genre have multiple PoVs, or else are told from a more distant writing stance like Tolkien does. There's not really much room for unreliable narrators in books like that - that only really works in a first-person or personal third-person story with a single PoV, or perhaps a small amount of contrasting PoVs like in the book snoop described above. It's particularly unsuitable for epic fantasy or sci-fi - at most, you'll get scenes in which the PoV character describes things he doesn't fully understand and where the reader has to fill in the gaps, or somehow make a guess at the gaps and ambiguities in the story as the PoV character sees it. I'm thinking particularly of Devin's storyline early on in Tigana.
1. Do you go into a novel with the assumption that the narrator will be reliable? Why?
Yes - as snoop said, in most novels they are reliable, and when they're not, you'll either figure this out soon enough, or you'll only figure it out when the author wants you to figure it out in order to create some effect.
2. Do you actively assess a narrator's reliability? Do you do it often? Are there triggers that make you stop and judge the narrator's reliability?
Not if there are no indicators that the reliability may be questionable, no. As for what kind of indicators... fairly obvious things, I would imagine - the PoV character disagreeing with other characters on what happened, being inconsistent in memories, having an obvious trauma or obsession about something, or seeming mentally unstable in some other way.
3. Do you prefer books with unreliable narrators? Why?
Not really, but it can be interesting I'm sure.
Unreliable narrators: yay or nay? Or neigh? And if so, and you are a horse, how are you typing?
- 12/03/2010 05:20:09 AM
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Re: Unreliable narrators: yay or nay? Or neigh? And if so, and you are a horse, how are you typing?
- 12/03/2010 09:12:23 AM
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I enjoyed reading the Bayard.
- 12/03/2010 11:55:09 PM
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Re: I enjoyed reading the Bayard.
- 14/03/2010 10:56:54 AM
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Re: I enjoyed reading the Bayard.
- 16/03/2010 10:37:35 PM
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I think it's fairly logical that genre fiction doesn't employ it as often.
- 12/03/2010 01:21:06 PM
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I think that unreliable narrators tend to be written by more experienced or skillful authors.
- 12/03/2010 06:56:06 PM
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