After starting over my novel from scratch and jumping back into some serious plotting, it has recently occurred to me that an unreliable narrator would best fit my story (a historical thriller set in the late Victorian era).
The story is a first-person narrative told by an orphaned young woman in her mid to late teens. My goal is to present her to the reader as a sympathetic character utterly innocent of any foul play (accidents, theft, fire, etc.) until the climax when she is revealed to have played a hand in most or if not all of the sinister events of the story. Her motivations are money (in this case, her inheritance) and the contempt she has for her well-to-do cousin.
Excepting certain tropes of the Gothic genre, I am trying to work out the best way to avoid clichés and maintain suspense. I would really appreciate some advice on unreliable narrators and what pitfalls to watch out for.
Adrian, thank you for the pointers. Yes, I will definitely plant seeds throughout the course of the novel rather than springing something extraordinary on the reader at the last minute. Ideally it would be a novel where the clues are hidden in plain sight and yet still be able to deceive the reader all the same.
Renee, to be honest my reading list hasn't brought me to Mr Vonnegut... but now Slaughterhouse 5 is definitely up there in my "when I get around to reading it" books. :) Thanks!
Charlie, thank you -- your ideas have given me a lot to think about. I'm not sure if I'll have the narrator. Whether I have the narrator lying more to herself than others, I've been thinking of starting the story from the end (the consequences of the heroine's actions) and then using every ensuing chapter to the end to show what brought her there.
There's also a third type of liar: one who is in denial. Maybe your narrator just doesn't want to face up to who she is or what she's done? Perhaps part of her story arc is to accept the uglier side of herself? She could be trying to convince herself she is innocent and honest and hasn't lost her moral integrity, thus lying to herself more than anyone else, which could crank up her inner conflict when confronted throughout the story by her own dastardly deeds right up in her face. To what lengths would she go to protect herself from the truth?
Khai,
Not sure if this will help but the best example of an unreliable narrator, in my opinion, has got to be in Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse 5'. Opening line:
“all this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true”
Great stuff. An essay written about it (by a friend of mine) is here http://www.consideredcapricious.com/slaughterhouse_5.html
RP