Authors are wily, so all of their narrators are unreliable to some degree. Whether they’re deliberately misleading the reader, or simply unaware of their own limitations, they can’t help but filter the story through their own perspective with their own blinders on. Still, it’s more obvious for some than others, and it can add amazing depth to a story. Here are thirty books with unreliable narrators.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Blurb: “In Gone Girl, Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior.”
Read my full review of Gone Girl here.
We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson
Blurb: “We Have Always Lived In The Castle unfolds through the lens of Merricat’s peculiar perspective, revealing a tale of dark secrets, societal ostracism, and the eerie atmosphere of a town marked by suspicion. Jackson weaves a narrative that explores the complexities of family relationships, mental instability, and the blurred lines between reality and the supernatural.”
Read my full review of We Have Always Lived In The Castle here.
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
Blurb: “Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, in American Psycho Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.”
Read my full review of American Psycho here.
The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time by Mark Haddon
Blurb: “Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time is the improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog, and it makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.”
Read my full review of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time here.
The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins
Blurb: “In The Girl On The Train, Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple having breakfast on their deck. And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel goes to the police. But is she really as unreliable as they say?”
Read my full review of The Girl On The Train here.
The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger
Blurb: “The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it.”
Read my full review of The Catcher In The Rye here.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Blurb: “In The Secret History, under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.”
Read my full review of The Secret History here.
We Were Liars by E Lockhart
Blurb: “We Were Liars introduced the world to a beautiful and distinguished family. A private island. A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy. A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive. A revolution. An accident. A secret. Lies upon lies. True love. The truth. Read it. And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.”
Read my full review of We Were Liars here.
You by Caroline Kepnes
Blurb: “When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card. As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. You is a terrifying exploration of how vulnerable we all are to stalking and manipulation.”
Read my full review of You here.
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Blurb: “On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives. Atonement follows that crime’s repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.”
Read my full review of Atonement here.
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
Blurb: “Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations―a search for the truth that threatens to consume him… The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband―and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.”
Read my full review of The Silent Patient here.
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Blurb: “Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey.”
Read my full review of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine here.
Room by Emma Donoghue
Blurb: “Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it’s the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack’s curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer. Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating — a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child.”
Read my full review of Room here.
Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson
Blurb: “Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love–all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may be telling you only half the story. Welcome to Christine’s life in Before I Go To Sleep. Every morning, she awakens beside a stranger in an unfamiliar bed. And every morning, the man patiently explains that he is Ben, her husband, that she is forty-seven-years-old, and that an accident long ago damaged her ability to remember. But can she trust Ben’s answers to her questions?”
Read my full review of Before I Go To Sleep here.
Notes On A Scandal by Zoe Heller
Blurb: “Schoolteacher Barbara Covett has led a solitary life until Sheba Hart, the new teacher at St. George’s, befriends her. But even as their relationship develops, so too does another: Sheba has begun an illicit affair with an underage male student. When the scandal turns into a media circus, Barbara decides to write an account in her friend’s defense—and ends up revealing not only Sheba’s secrets but her own. Notes On A Scandal is a story of repression and passion, envy and complacence, friendship and loneliness.”
Read my full review of Notes On A Scandal here.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Blurb: “Piranesi is an intoxicating, hypnotic book set in a dreamlike alternative reality. Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.”
Read my full review of Piranesi here.
Bunny by Mona Awad
Blurb: “Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination. Samantha Heather Mackey couldn’t be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies’ fabled Smut Salon, and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door – ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies’ sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus Workshop where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur.”
Read my full review of Bunny here.
I’m Thinking Of Ending Things by Iain Reid
Blurb: “In I’m Thinking Of Ending Things, a dark and compelling, unputdownable literary thriller, debut novelist Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, this novel packs a big psychological punch with a twisty story line and an ending that will leave readers breathless.”
Read my full review of I’m Thinking Of Ending Things here.
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
“Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine in Pizza Girl is deeply lost and in complete denial. Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighborhood, who comes to depend on weekly deliveries of pickled-covered pizzas for her son’s happiness. As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other toward middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways.”
Read my full review of Pizza Girl here.
The Dinner by Herman Koch
Blurb: “The Dinner is darkly suspenseful tale of two families struggling to make the hardest decision of their lives—all over the course of one meal. Between mouthfuls of food and over the scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.”
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Blurb: “Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. This is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.”
Read my full review of My Dark Vanessa here.
We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Blurb: “Eva never really wanted to be a mother—and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. We Need to Talk About Kevin is a piercing, unforgettable, and penetrating exploration of violence, family ties, and responsibility.”
Read my full review of We Need To Talk About Kevin here.
The Maid by Nita Prose
Blurb: “Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has been navigating life’s complexities all by herself. No matter—she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. But Molly’s orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different—and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.”
Read my full review of The Maid here.
Listen For The Lie by Amy Tintera
Blurb: “What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn’t matter? It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life. But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast Listen For The Lie, and its too-good looking host Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one that did it.”
Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey
Blurb: “In Elizabeth Is Missing—a sophisticated psychological mystery that is also an heartbreakingly honest meditation on memory, identity, and aging—an elderly woman descending into dementia embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared, and her search for the truth will go back decades and have shattering consequences. As vivid memories of a tragedy that occurred more fifty years ago come flooding back, Maud discovers new momentum in her search for her friend.”
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
Blurb: “Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, the story of Eileen is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator.”
Read my full review of Eileen here.
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Blurb: “England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph? Wolf Hall is a darkly brilliant reimagining of life under Henry VIII.”
Read my full review of Wolf Hall here.
Money by Martin Amis
Blurb: “Money is everything. Especially to John Self, a successful commercial director from London. He spends his days steeped in booze and pornography and prostitutes, lost in the hedonistic lifestyle of his peers. But John has bigger dreams, and he sets off for America on the invitation of the filmmaker Fielding Goodney in the hope of getting his first feature film, titled Good Money, off the ground. It is in America where John must contend with his degenerative proclivities, or risk the life he’s built. Money is Martin Amis at his very best: a hilarious, razor-sharp, and wholly singular storyteller.”
Read my full review of Money here.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Blurb: “As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And in Never Let Me Go, she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.”
Read my full review of Never Let Me Go here.
Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Blurb: “In Crime And Punishment, when Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the tsars, commits an act of murder and theft, he sets into motion a story that is almost unequalled in world literature for its excruciating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its depth of characterization and vision. Dostoevsky’s drama of sin, guilt, and redemption transforms the sordid story of an old woman’s murder into the nineteenth century’s profoundest and most compelling philosophical novel.”
Read my full review of Crime And Punishment here.
Leave a Reply