The unreliable narrator is one of fiction’s oldest and most powerful devices. Yet readers fall for it every time. We know, going into a story, that the narrator might be lying. We also know that the story might not be what it appears to be. Yet we trust anyway.
Why?
The answer says something important about how human beings process information, and about what makes psychological thrillers so compelling, and so uncomfortable to read.
We Are Wired to Trust Narrators
When someone tells us a story, our brains do something remarkable. We don’t evaluate the story as an outsider. We step inside it. And adopt the narrator’s perspective as our own, filter events through their eyes, feel what they feel. Psychologists call this narrative transportation. It is the reason fiction produces genuine emotion.
We are not watching, we are living inside the story.
The unreliable narrator exploits the same mechanism. By the time we realize we’ve been misled, we are already deep inside the narrator’s worldview. Backing out is uncomfortable. This requires us to re-examine everything we accepted without doubt or question.
The Reader Is Always Complicit
Here is what nobody tells you about the unreliable narrator: the deception only works because the reader participates in it.
We are given clues but choose not to follow them.
We want to believe the narrator’s version of events because it’s easier, or more comforting. Perhaps more exciting than the alternative.
This is not the reader’s fault. It is a way of engaging with the story. We want to trust and display good faith. This influences us to fill the gaps with assumptions that favor the story’s version we’ve already committed to.
The best unreliable narrators understand this and use it with precision. They don’t hide the truth but present it in a way that makes it look different. The reader’s mind then does the rest.
Why This Matters Beyond Fiction
The unreliable narrator isn’t just a narrative device. It is an example of how we trust in real life. We trust people who tell us what we want to hear and dismiss red flags that contradict the story we’ve already decided is true.
All of us are unreliable narrators of our own lives. We select, shape, and omit to create a coherent self that we can live with.
Cobra Orchard uses this mechanism deliberately. The reader receives information from multiple perspectives, and each one is shaped by what that character needs to believe about themselves and others.
Nobody is really lying. And nobody is really telling the complete truth.
If you enjoy fiction that makes you question everything you thought you knew, explore Cobra Orchard and decide for yourself who to trust.
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Which unreliable narrator has stayed with you the longest: in a book, a film, or even in real life? Love to hear your comments!
Three women. Two timelines. One curse that refuses to die. Set in the shadow-drenched villages of Uttar Pradesh, India — across the 1970s and the early 2000s.
Cobra Orchard is a psychological thriller about secrets buried so deep, even the earth forgot them. Read Cobra Orchard on Amazon Kindle
Terveen Gill is a writer who has always been drawn to the uncomfortable truth hiding beneath ordinary lives. A Times of India and Chandigarh Literary Society award-winning short story writer, she is also a graphic novel script writer, indie filmmaker, and a former engineer.
Her debut psychological thriller Cobra Orchard is the culmination of that instinct: a dark, immersive novel about three women, a sinister guru, and secrets buried so deep they have begun to rot.
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