That debate over unreliable narrators in book club yesterday got heated

I was at the downtown library group in Austin and someone said unreliable narrators are just lazy writing. I honestly think they add layers that make you think twice about what you just read. Like in Gone Girl, the whole story falls apart without Amy's skewed perspective. Has anyone else seen a book club fight break out over this kind of thing?

3 comments

3 Comments

leodavis25d ago

Gone Girl is a perfect example. Without Amy's version of events the whole thing is just a basic crime story. Unreliable narrators make you work for it. That's the point.

burns.jenny25d ago

Walked into my book club last month and the host asked me to summarize the chapter I'd read, and I got so mixed up I accidentally described the plot of a completely different book from three years ago. Turns out my husband was right when he says I'm an unreliable narrator in real life too. But honestly, I think the argument in my group was less about technique and more about the fact that one member brought store-bought cookies instead of homemade, which really set the tone for hostility. Sometimes I wonder if these heated debates are really about the book or just people wanting to be right about something, anything. For me, an unreliable narrator is like that friend who tells you a wild story and you know half of it is made up but you listen anyway because the version they tell is way better than the boring truth.

theagibson24d ago

Totally get where you're coming from. At our Austin group, the unreliable narrator debate almost turned into a shouting match. Someone said it was the author being lazy, and I just sat there thinking, have you even read The Yellow Wallpaper? That whole story works because you can't trust a thing the narrator says about her own sanity. It's not lazy writing, it's making you question what you'd believe if you were in her shoes. And honestly, I think some people just don't like feeling uncomfortable while reading. They want a straight path from point A to point B. But where's the fun in that?