The Unreliable Narrator in Memoir

In first grade, my sister told her class that our sister had been eaten by a lion at the zoo, and that was why we had moved there. When asked why she had said such a thing, she explained that she had nothing for show and tell. My question all these years later, is why the teacher believed her?

A problem every writer can appreciate. Her solution was perhaps a little ambitious.

I’ve been thinking about the term Unreliable Narrator, and why I like it. Or, maybe not like, but not fear it. But underneath that is something I’m trying to give myself permission to do. Tell my story without spending the rest of my life defending every sentence against someone else’s recollection. Or worse, toning down my recollection because the protagonist will be staring me down across the Thanksgiving table.

Being the narrator gives me the floor. Does it make me the authority on what happened? I was there, certainly. But I was also busy being myself. Wanting something. Missing something. Paying very close attention to a remark someone else has no memory of making.

Take the end of a friendship. I might tell you I finally set a boundary. The friend might tell you I disappeared when she needed me most. I can produce a long history of being there for her. She can describe the afternoon I wasn’t. The interesting part is what I leave out because I’ve already decided what kind of person I was in that story.

This is part of what interests me about memoir. The facts matter. So does the person carrying them around. Something I understood as rejection at thirty might look like someone else’s exhaustion at seventy. The event hasn’t changed. I have. And presumably the other person has been doing some changing too, although I may have left them exactly where they were in my telling. Wearing the same unfortunate sweater.

Then there is Elizabeth Holmes and the documentary You Can See Everything. If ever there were a person whose account of herself invites the question, surely she qualifies. What does she believe about her own story? What does she need the audience to believe? And can she still tell the difference?

Her example also exposes the limits of my affection for the phrase. Unreliable narrator sounds rather charming on a T-shirt. It becomes considerably less charming when people are being asked to trust claims about their health or hand over their money. Having a perspective does not release anyone from responsibility for the facts. Neither does having nothing for show and tell.

But I think every writer needs to find some peace with the possibility of being an unreliable narrator. Otherwise, the imagined objections begin writing the piece for you. You explain too much, soften something that should stand, or leave out the scene you most need to write because someone else will tell you that isn’t how it happened. Eventually, you’re writing a defense of your story instead of the story itself.

I want to make an honest effort with the facts, leave room for what I cannot know, and trust the reader to notice things I may have missed. Perhaps the reader will understand something about me before I understand it myself.

I would appreciate being told gently. I am, after all, still the person telling this story.