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Why Do Writers Use Unreliable Narrators?

The device works brilliantly when it succeeds. But it can bring a book down when it doesn’t

Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins in “The Remains of the Day” / Credit: Sony

Unreliable narration — the use of a storyteller we can’t fully trust — helps to explain the appeal of books as different as Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, Scott Turow’s Presumed…