In Literary Novels, An Unreliable Narrator Usually Indicates the Character’s and/or the Writer’s Multiple Personality

Lying is a cheap trick. Readers don’t like it. And I don’t believe that most unreliable narration is based on the writer’s wish to be unreliable.

In everyday life, most lies have an obvious motivation, and most liars, if confronted with their lies, are embarrassed. This does not make great literature.

If a liar is not embarrassed, and lies even when it is not necessary, you may have the basis for a literary story. But most people who lie like that have multiple personality, and they are not, in the usual sense, lying, because what is happening is that alternate personalities are each giving their version of the truth as they see it.

The reason for this post is that I read a review of a novel with an unreliable narrator, and then looked up unreliable narrators, but multiple personality was hardly mentioned.

I will come back to this issue in the future when discussing a novel with an unreliable narrator.