Paula Hawkins' debut novel, The Girl on the Train, is a hit. Readers and critics alike appear to love Hawkins' gripping psychological thriller. With some incredibly satisfying plot twists and an unreliable narrator to keep things interesting, it's shaping-up to be this season's Gone Girl, and I have noticed engrossed readers toting this book around everywhere.
An unreliable narrator is a beautiful thing in the world of suspense fiction luring readers down the wrong path, offering up stories that may or may not be real, manipulating us and serving up startling revelations. Gillian Flynn executed it brilliantly in Gone Girl. Hawkins employs it cleverly in The Girl on The Train. If you love an unreliable narrator, there are many great ones to be found on library shelves. Before I Go to Sleep features an amnesic narrator who wakes up every morning unable to remember what transpired the day before but finds clues in her diary leading her to wonder if her husband is the man he appears to be.
In How to Be A Good Wife, Marta begins having haunting visions when she stops taking her medication and starts to suspect the stories her husband, Hector, has been telling her are not the truth.
As aging Maud loses her memory in Elizabeth Is Missing, she tries to piece together where her missing friend, Elizabeth, has gone.
In The Other Typist, Rose falls under the spell of a fellow typist, the beautiful and charismatic Odalie, and becomes embroiled in her dangerous world. But can we trust the story Rose is telling us?
Who is your favorite unreliable narrator in literature?
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