Unreliable Narrator
A storyteller whose account the reader cannot fully trust.
Origin
The technique is old (Don Quixote, Wuthering Heights, The Turn of the Screw) but the term was coined by critic Wayne Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961). Booth meant a narrator whose values diverge from the implied author's; the popular use is broader โ any narrator who lies, misremembers, or sees the world askew.
Modern usage
Standard in book reviews and TV writing. Gone Girl, Fight Club, and American Psycho are the canonical 21st-century examples; the term gets reached for whenever a 'twist' is built on what the narrator failed to tell us.
Tags
Related
Literary Devices
The Fourth Wall
The imaginary boundary between fiction and audience โ sometimes deliberately broken.
Literary Devices
Plot Armor
The invisible protection that keeps key characters alive because the story needs them.
Literary Devices
Mary Sue
An implausibly perfect character โ usually a thinly veiled self-insert by the author.