Reading Response 9: The Unreliable Narrator in "The Story"

Out of all of the stories we had to read this week, I thought “The Story” by Amy Bloom was one of the more intriguing reads, specifically because of the quasi-unreliable narrator. We’ve had unreliable narrators before: the man in “Bigfoot Stole My Wife”, for instance, does not inspire much confidence. But readers go into that story expecting an unreliable narrator. Except for fantasy stories anyone who claims that their wife was abducted by Sasquatch is asking to be laughed at. But what is so chilling and so interesting about the narrator in “The Story” is that she is believable. Readers accept her version of events as true simply because they seem plausible. Until the section of the story in which she admits that the first part of her tale is a story she’s spun, readers have no reason to disbelieve anything she’s written. Oh, we knew she was a writer, but so are we, and so there is no reason to doubt that her memoir is as true as any story possibly can be.

And yet... what is the truth? Every story ever told, even the ones we tell ourselves are unreliable. Nothing, not even a police report is ever entirely accurate. Humans NEED stories, need to create some order out of the chaos of life; so we impose an internal narration. This is the reason that no two people have the same memory of an event. Everything is interpreted through that person’s individual experiences, memories, personality.

So is there such a thing as a reliable narrator? I don’t think so, and I don’t think Bloom does either. Even as her narrator delineates and defends her lies, she is still telling a story. Why should we believe this new story any more than her first take on the narrative? How do we know the things she described happened to this narrator at all? How can we believe anything she writes? And what’s more, why should we?

In the end, I suppose, one has to trust their narrator, at least far enough to get into the meat of the story. Whether or not we can give trust them beyond that point must be up to individual readers and their own internal narrations.