From L to R: Meg Wolitzer, Jodi Lynn Anderson, Alaya Dawn Johnson, E. Lockhart, Barry Lyga.
Moderator: Jennifer Thompson

From classics like Lolita and Pride and Prejudice to films like The Usual Suspects to modern YA tales like E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars (Random House, 2014), examples of books featuring untrustworthy protagonists ran the gamut at SLJ’s Day of Dialog panel “Unreliable YA Narrators.” This phenomenon may not be specific to the young adult world, but according to moderator Jennifer Thompson, the young adult services coordinator at the Brooklyn Public Library, the feeling of being tricked or deceived by a narrator can be truly life altering for teens, coming to represent a realization that the “the world isn’t black and white, but rather gray.” Lockhart and others were on hand, delving into why these narrators have such appeal for an adolescent audience, how they craft books with unreliable narrators, and their own experiences reading books that feature such characters. The authors agreed that though unreliable narrators often hold a great draw for a reader, these characters need not be easy to identify with or even likable—in fact, an unlikable character often makes for a more memorable novel. Lockhart brought up one of her favorite protagonists, the scheming but charming and compelling Lorelei Lee of Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Alaya Johnson agreed: “There’s something about characters who lie. That charisma can carry you through [a story].”

We Were Liars E. Lockhart (center).

The Interestings (Penguin, 2013) author Meg Wolitzer—who has a Penguin YA novel coming out Behlzar in September—compared the idea that a narrator must be relatable to the feeling that a presidential election should be decided on the basis of which candidate voters would most like to share a beer with—something she finds “alarming,” both in politics and in writing. Similarly, Barry Lyga—author of the upcoming I Hunt Killers (Little, Brown, 2012)—said that he never worries about making his characters likable, because to do so “[shears] off their rough edges.” For him, it’s more effective to make a character honest and true to life at the expense of making them someone that readers will necessarily gravitate toward. Lyga and Lockhart questioned whether any narrator can truly be reliable. Lockhart brought up Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, saying that even though the classic work is written in the third person, it’s clear from the opening line that the narrator has a point of view and perspective. Lyga emphasized that any first person narrator is inherently unreliable and that even most third person narrators are as well. Truly omniscient narrators are rare, he said, because audiences now have a need to feel a connection to characters, rather than seeing them as objective characters who are far removed. “Readers demand that [connection],” says Lyga. Jodi Lynn Anderson discussed the spectrum of unreliability, from books where a character’s childlike innocence explains their unreliability (such as Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) to examples of more nefarious, self-deceiving narrators, like Humbert Humbert in Vladimir Nabakov’s Lolita. Providing an example of innocence leading to unreliability, Johnson brought up Franny Billingsley Chime (Dial, 2011) in which a character sees her dramatic and effusive father’s actions as wonderful—but she’s unaware that his behavior stems from his alcoholism.

Love Is a Drug's Alaya Dawn Johnson

Though these authors are intimately familiar with crafting unreliable narrators, all enjoyed coming across the phenomenon when reading other books. Lyga likened his own experience of reading unreliable narrators to that of a professional chef eating a home-cooked meal, stating that he can often see where other writers are going or what they’re trying to do but that he appreciates when a writer pulls it off well. Wolitzer paraphrased author John Updike’s advice to reviewers—to submit to a book’s spell—rather than actively trying to figure out where an author is going. “I like both the pleasure of being right and the pleasure of being wrong.” Above all, authors emphasized the potentially exhilarating feeling of reading a book with an unreliable narrator, especially for adolescents. For Johnson, that moment that readers realize that adults are fallible and that the things you trust are broken is a powerful and memorable one. “Readers are innocent. You assume what a writer tells you is true,” said Wolitzer. “When you realize a character doesn’t know something that you have knowledge of, it’s an exciting feeling.” Watch a clip of the "Unreliable YA Narrators" panel. Read more coverage of SLJ's Day of Dialog.