Rachel Edwards’ eponymous Darling belongs in the latter category. Others seem so trustworthy and endearing that the reader will take their hand without a second thought, and allow them to lead the way. Some unreliable narrators have an iffy smell about them from the get-go (Barbara, from Notes on a Scandal, is a case in point). Notes on a Scandal is a dazzling exploration of the blurred border between love and cruelty, and it is Barbara’s voice-insinuating, needy, touching, domineering, sinister-that generates the story’s power.ĭarling by Rachel Edwards (2018). How ‘fortunate’ then (inverted commas very much intended) that Barbara is on hand to provide comfort and protection. When the illicit teacher-pupil affair becomes a public scandal, Sheba’s life implodes, and she becomes a pariah. Barbara, a lonely woman in her sixties, who has struggled all her life to maintain proper friendships, is deeply drawn to her younger, prettier co-worker, and an unequal friendship begins: superficial on Sheba’s part, increasingly obsessive on Barbara’s. It is also-or perhaps it is really -the story of a very twisted friendship, as told by Sheba’s colleague and confidante, Barbara Covett. Notes on a Scandal is the story of school teacher, Sheba Hart, and her affair with a teenaged pupil. The unreliable narrators in this list range from guardians of moral virtue, to enchanting spinners-of-yarns, to out-and-out psychopaths. On the other hand, the unreliable narrator may be a deliberate manipulator, wanting nothing more-or less-than to mess with the reader’s mind. It may be knowing, but well-meant, if they have a particular agenda to push. The lack of reliability may be innocent: a result of the narrator’s own limited perspective. You might argue that all fiction does this by luring the reader into a temporary belief that made-up people and events are entitled to their time, energy and emotions-but the effect is definitely heightened when an unreliable narrator is part of the mix. In novels (if not in life) there is something very pleasurable about being taken for a ride.
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