Shell Games and the Talking Snake

When I was little, going through the local “festas” (think mobile fair and amusement park, usually set up for a saint’s day outside a church. In Summer there was one every weekend in the immediate vicinity) I remember seeing tables set up and men – it was always men – speaking fast to a group.

My mother taught me early not to trust these men, who played shell games “little red one” (vermelhinha in Portuguese) or sold patent medicines (for some reason the only bit of patter from the patent medicine seller was his holding up a suitcase and saying “Inside this suitcase, I have a snake that can even speak!”

In Portugal, in the early sixties, in my area – just outside the second largest city – con men usually came to the business the traditional way – they inherited it, having been trained by their fathers. Locals stayed away from them because they knew the family. Only the yokels arrived from the mountains would fall for their line.

So... what does this have to do with writing? Other than the fact that writers’ lie by definition? And get paid for their lies? And that we pass our craft, mutatis mutandi to our “children” though these are usually not blood children?

Believe it or not I wasn’t bringing this up to excoriate myself for getting paid for telling lies. Okay, so it bothered me the first time (me “Do they know every word in this is made up, and they’re paying me thousands of dollars?” My long-suffering husband: “They count on it. They hate plagiarism.”) but that kind of con is the sort where both parties consent. I tell you a story, you suspend disbelief. If at some point the disbelief starts choking, you send me – or my book – about my business.

However, the lie I had in mind here, was another kind. What happens when the narrator is totally, completely unreliable? Or worse, because more unpredictable, partially unreliable? They tell you the absolute truth... with reservations.

I don’t need to bring up The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, for which many still curse Dame Christie’s memory. Practically every regency romance, for instance, was cursed with a heroine that was perfectly truthful, except about her own looks.

It’s not an easy thing to write – craft wise – because you need to give clues to the reader along the way. For instance, I once wrote a couple where the – voice – character thinks himself unattractive and had the joy of seeing everyone in my writer group think the girl was a gold-digger. This despite the fact that I thought I had signaled the character was nuts – and had no mirrors, or didn’t know how to use them – all along, by having people fall at his feet. Because it was first person, the reader interiorized the voice character’s self evaluation.

On a smaller scale, both Dave and I had unreliable narrators in our current/upcoming books. I was stuck with the lovely Athena in Darkship Thieves, a girl who is in such profound denial about everything that she couldn’t find her way if it were marked in neon. And Dave’s Dragon’s Ring characters are different kinds of unreliable. Weirdly, the rogue is the one who presents most honestly to the reader. The innocent... well... growth is required. I think both of us did creditable jobs of turning the corners, but perhaps I’m flattering myself. (As usual.) OTOH no one has written me an annoyed letter in response to the earcs, so perhaps I’m okay. ;)

So... Once you realize a narrator is unreliable – does he lose you? If not, why not? Is it because everyone loves a rogue? Or because the deception is understandable? Or even because the character him/herself was deluded? Do unreliable narrators add to the spice, or not?