Don’t believe everything you hear – or read

By Sy Boles | Harvard Staff Writer | Harvard Gazette

Unreliable narrators have existed for as long as humans have told stories to each other—and that includes novels.

The uneasy relationship between reader, narrator and writer creates a “uniquely intense reading experience,” says Ian Shank, a preceptor and instructor of expository writing. Department of Continuing Education Courses which explores the mechanics of unreliable narrators in stories.

But it also reflects a truth about our lived experience, which perhaps explains why we find it so compelling.

“An uncomfortable fact of life is that we are always deceiving ourselves and others,” Shank said. “Whenever we sit down to write, or interview for a job, or go on a date, we put on a persona that is, to some degree, artificial — a performance of someone we want to be or see as more than who we really are. What unreliable narrators do particularly well is expose these fictions as fictions — the ways in which we live our lives every day. Desperately, we still cling to these visions of ourselves.”

Whatever the reason, readers are clearly intrigued by the storytellers with their own fallacies or agendas. Here’s a list of some favorites suggested by Shank, along with other faculty and staff from around the university.

“Leaving Atocha Station” by Ben Lerner (2011)

Recommended by Ian Shank, Writing Preceptor and Continuing Education Instructor of “Unreliable Narrators”

Although Ben Lerner was already a celebrated poet when he published “Living the Atocha Station” in 2011, it was this novel — his debut — that cemented his status as one of the leading voices in contemporary literature.

A subsequent winner of the 2015 MacArthur “Genius” Grant, and described by The New York Times Magazine as “the most talented writer of her generation,” Lerner followed up “Leaving Atocha Station” with two other autofictional novels — “10:04” and “The Topeka School” — on the shortlist. Both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Still, it’s “Leaving Atocha Station” that sticks with me. In it, a young poet wanders through Fulbright in Madrid, oscillating between what Lerner describes as “a coming-of-age story” and “a year in the life of a socialite.” Exactly where and how readers draw the line remains one of the key puzzles of this slick, cerebral book –– made all the more fraught by the narrator’s mental health crisis, frequent drug use, and compulsive, self-destructive lying.

In other words, beside the novel’s plot points. As fans of Lerner know, the real joy of the book (and of reading Lerner in general) resides in his sentences — the place where Lerner distinguishes himself as one of the most accomplished prose stylists working today.

“Motherthing” by Ainslie Hogarth (2022)

Suggested by Erin Labov, Cataloger of Published Materials, Schlesinger Library

Abby Lamb has many complicated relationships in her life, especially with her difficult mother-in-law who, after her untimely death, seems to relentlessly haunt her and her husband from the afterlife. With the guidance of her trusty 1930s cookbook, Abby explores her current issues and her past traumas to understand and define what a mother really is and how they shape (or destroy) our lives.

Cataloging vintage cookbooks is one of my specialties, so it was fun to have one featured so prominently in a horror novel; A gelatin mold even makes an appearance! Abby is a delightful character who adds a lot of humor to a pretty boring book. If you go the audiobook route, the narrator does a great job of portraying him!

“Mole Flanders” by Daniel Defoe (1722)

Recommended by The New York Review Books Editor Edwin Frank ’82

“Every narrator is unreliable—every narrative.” Such was the conversation at the breakfast table this morning, and, yes, I agree. Each narrative is told with some interest and with a desire to arouse interest.

Narratives may be interested but never innocent, and the least innocent are those who assume the mantle of omniscience. Religious texts are, after all, the most contested texts, especially by those who hold them.

We know how slippery the narrative is, why do we like it? Perhaps we listen to the narrative in a dream, hoping to get rid of the doubts of sleep? Every story sets out in search of an end, an end to storytelling. Every story is a bedtime story. hush

A book that is entirely innocent, and makes no bones about it, a book about one who has designs on everyone, who lives in a world where designs are being made and cannot be avoided as ruthlessly as necessary in carrying out those designs; A book of strategy, daring the dangers, and the rewards of cutting, spoiling, clawing back, advancing, all told in a hypnotic first person who tracks that voice, its sentences and sequences, the vigilance of a private detective and the “dotting complacency” of Daniel Demophos, mentor of a contented Daniel’s wife.

Moll is hardly omniscient, but he is indomitable, and like a good storyteller he knows how to move. There is nothing to pin him or his book on, and his survival—admittedly, an unnecessary, but wonderful story—we gladly entrust ourselves to its unfaithful hands.

Sonali Dev’s “Recipe for Inspiration” (2020)

Recommended by Kai Fay, Discovery and Strategic Project Manager, Harvard Libraries

In this contemporary romance retelling of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion,” chef Ashna Raje is paired with retired soccer player Rico Silva for a cooking competition that could determine the fate of his struggling restaurant. Both were high school crushes before life intervened and aren’t sure how to feel about their unexpected reunion.

Besides being a fun romance, the novel explores themes of grief, generational trauma and family expectations.

The story is told through the alternate perspectives of the two main characters as well as Ashna’s mother Shoban. Although the characters do their best to communicate with each other, they are all shaped by their own experiences to such an extent that they often don’t realize that they are having completely different conversations and telling different stories about the same set of events.

All three narrators are unreliable in their own ways, and much of the story’s conflict is driven by the miscommunication that occurs when their version of reality collides with another character’s.

Jason Shiger’s “AdventureGame Comics” series

Suggested by DZ Kalman, a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society

I’d love to choose choose-your-own-adventures by Jason Shiga. If you want a specific book, choose “AdventureGame Comics: The Beyond”.

The choose-your-own-adventure genre isn’t generally considered a place for literary creativity—or, really, for adults. Perhaps it’s because most books of this type are boringly honest about what happens when you turn to page 36, and because their numerous, arbitrary branching paths mean you can never finish the story, but instead exhaust its possibilities.

Shiga contributed to the maturity of the genre by telling stories in which the reader could only find release by questioning the rigidity of the format. It’s a tricky thing to do without the reader simply flipping through the pages in anarchy, yet Shiga pulls it off multiple times, each time breaking the genre in a different way. If you’ve ever played the Stanley Parable video game, you’ll love these books.

In the context of choose-your-own-adventure, disloyalty comes from breaking the contract with the reader that you only need to turn to X page to continue the story.

For example (spoiler): In any book, the story cannot be concluded until the question is asked which character in the story represents “you” (the reader). In another, the solution requires awareness of the entire web of possible paths. In that, the reader has to ignore what the book is telling you about how it’s designed to work. So perhaps the “narrator” himself is the instructions.

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This is the story is reprinted with permission From the Harvard Gazette.

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