Tag Archive | unreliable narrator

Book Review: The Good Son

Jul1

Spoilers ahead.

Like a lot of great thrillers, The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong starts out with the main character waking up to a mess of some kind, one which he doesn’t understand, and one in which he spends the rest of the book putting the pieces together. Although the story started well, it became apparent far too quickly that Yu Jin was an unreliable narrator, so I couldn’t take any of his reasoning and excuses very seriously.

The mess Yu Jin wakes up to is the murder of his mother–someone has cut her throat and blood is everywhere, especially all over his own person. Throughout this story it is amazing that no one in his Seoul apartment complex seems even aware anything is amiss in his apartment, but that’s kind of how life goes sometimes. For being innocent, Yu Jin sure knows how to tidy up the mess and hide the evidence, and then later on it’s obvious he just doesn’t want to admit to himself what he is, a psychopath who will not only kill people he thinks are in his way, but kill people simply because he gets off on their fear. He also is addicted and triggered by the smell of blood, much like a shark.

Yu Jin is shocked partway through the story to find that he doesn’t have epilepsy but a psychopath tendency. But his shock isn’t real, he’s not like Ba Reum from Mouse who genuinely is surprised and remorseful at the awful person he is. People in general are really good at deluding themselves about themselves and why should psychos be any different? The one thing to admire about him is that he wants to live and to live on his own terms. He does feel a sense of obligation to his family, but not so much as to prevent him from killing them. As to him being a “good” son, he clearly was nothing of the sort, though his adopted brother might have been.

I enjoyed the read, but it’s limited in scope and Yu Jin’s is not as interesting as other fictional psychos like Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. Although Ripley is referenced on the cover of this book, The Good Son cannot hold a candle to that chilling masterpiece. And Yu Jin has few of the amusing and exasperating gamma thoughts and behaviors of Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment. And the religious aspect does not ring home at all, it’s just there, but offers no food for thought unlike Mouse and C&P. So, although I made it through The Good Son, I found it to be just ok, but not holding its own against better stories of the same genre or similar plots. Maybe it’s better in Korean.

Probably the most thoughtful aspect of the book, was Yu Jin’s family, and how delusional they were about him and about what they could do for him. Clearly, he should have been under care of some kind a long time ago and kept away from society. Yes, Yu Jin maybe had no life, or at least not the life he wanted, but neither did his mother. Her sudden adoption of his friend is her grabbing what she sees as a life line. The adopted brother is someone Yu Jin views in a better light than is warranted. I think it could have to do with Yu Jin’s desire to be out in the world and that his brother goes out in the world all the time. His mother does not; his aunt does not. But, with almost all of the other characters, Yu Jin makes a number of assumptions that are either lies he’s telling both the readers and himself, or are simply flat out wrong. Even at the end of the book, it’s obvious he really doesn’t know, he’s just assuming and imagining things to be a certain way, and it’s more pitiful than chilling.

Better, more thrilling stories of this nature are: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Atonement by Ian McEwan, and the Korean drama Mouse starring Lee Seung Gi.

Here Lies Daniel Tate: Book Review (spoilers)

Nov27

Here Lies Daniel Tate by Cristin Terrill has a great plot: Missing kid turns up years later, but can’t remember much about his past. Bit by bit, he tries to understand his family and what happened at the time of his disappearance. My first thought was The Face on the Milk Carton for a new generation!

No. But it’s much worse than that. The real plot is something else. Con man fakes being a missing kid now in his teens in order to get out of trouble. The main character in the story is a liar. Usually, a story involving an unreliable narrator leaves you questioning everything you just saw or read. If this was what the author was going for in this particular tale, for me it fell flat. The first few chapters promised a roller coaster ride that never really manifested. I read about halfway through in one sitting…and then forgot entirely about the story for days before realizing, “oh, yeah, I never finished reading that.”

So what went wrong? First, I just want to say that All Our Yesterdays, also by Terrill is fantastic. That story had me transfixed. With Here Lies Daniel Tate, it seemed like a great idea that wasn’t executed well. The characters were always viewed from a distance by our narrator, and because of that an emotional link is missing between the characters and the readers. The swearing annoyed me, but most swearing in books and movies does. I can understand trying to be realistic, but for me, it just got in the way of the story.

All that aside, after page 100 or so, Here Lies Daniel Tate gets really boring. Nothing happens. Okay, he goes to school, that’s what happens. And for writers, this is death, your story dies if your readers lose interest. Finishing the book was torture, it was no fun to read the rest and I didn’t understand why a vital component was left out: Keep your audience on their toes. Always make things happen faster or before the audience thinks they should. This rule applies especially to modern audiences, many of whom, like me, have a short attention span. I think a good editor would have spotted this problem. A good editor would have also spotted that unreliable narrator set up at the beginning, never delivered the twist calling the whole story into question. An author that does twists extremely well is Ian McEwan of Atonement fame. For a case study in unreliable narrators, please read that book or even just see the film. Another wonderful unreliable narrator book is The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan, and I reviewed that a February or two ago. I’m not saying every unreliable narrator has to end the tale with, “whelp, I lied…or did I?” but it’s just so, so much fun when they do.

Here Lies Daniel Tate had potential that was never realized, and I sort of wish we could dump it in the time machine from All Our Yesterdays to rewrite itself and try again.

The Lifeboat: Can You Trust Yourself?

Feb25

Few stories are more fascinating than those written through the viewpoint of an unreliable narrator.  This is one of the reasons why the book Atonement proved to be so good–that, and the setting.  The Lifeboat by first time author Charlotte Rogan has both elements, as well, the setting being the initial draw for those who like a good sea yarn and are interested in the ocean liner era in which the Titanic sank.  It is also a book that will keep you up all night.

First things first:  The cover art is amazing, showing a lone, half-full lifeboat as a bright spot in the midst of a gloomy blue sea and sky.  The picture is at once beautiful and haunting, immediately capturing the tale in the mind of the reader as one that will be highly affecting, both mentally and emotionally.

thelifeboat

That the main character and narrator of the story, Grace Winter, is unreliable, becomes evident from the first page of the prologue in which Grace, out to lunch with her lawyers, shocks them by standing in a downpour.  She states that they must think her crazy and from how she puts things, Grace herself seems to share their opinion.

Her tale begins similarly to that of the movie Titanic.  Grace is a young, formerly penniless woman who has won the heart of a rich man and they are sailing on the Empress Alexander to New York, where the two are to announce their marriage to his friends and family.  The difference in this story is that Grace loves the rich young man.  The ocean liner sinks, there aren’t enough lifeboats, and those that are filled are not all filled to capacity.  Men, women, and children, drown in the icy waters while the survivors look on helpless to save them, lest they too sink and be drowned.

The biggest part of the novel takes place on the lifeboat where Grace has been saved along with thirty-odd women and a few men.  Grace captivates the reading by tales of treachery, of heroics, self-sacrifice, and spiteful gossip.  Over and over again, she states that what they were all going through makes it nearly impossible to know if some events occurred or not.  Memory is faulty in the best of circumstances.  Add in physical, mental, and spiritual trauma that lasts for weeks and you have a recipe for a break from reality.

Why is Grace Winter now in the company of lawyers?  She and two other women who survived on the lifeboat are on trial for murder.  It is in the final court scenes that we as readers realize how truly unreliable Grace is.  A faulty memory and trauma, we can forgive her for, and we can even forgive her for being manipulated by stronger personalities aboard the boat.  But then, the mask slips a bit, and we see a glimpse or two of the real Grace, the manipulative Grace, and then, just like in Atonement, the entire story is called into question.

Add to that the inexplicable inclusion of some kind of jewel heist to the plot and the book becomes unputdownable.  The hints throughout the story of what is actually going on, are so subtle, that I wasn’t able to peace it altogether.  A smarter reader probably would be able to distinguish by the end just who is manipulating whom (ha, I think I used it correctly there!).

The Lifeboat is a fascinating read precisely because the narrator is unreliable.  The big question we are left with at the end is: just how unreliable is Grace Winter?  The themes of uncertainty of memory, questions others’ intentions, and the tendency of gossip to elaborate upon itself make this a story in which we as readers question ourselves.  Most of us have probably never been stranded aboard a lifeboat at sea, wasting away after days of hunger, dehydration, and lack of sleep, but who of us has not ever questioned our own memory of an incident?  Who of us has not ever had someone else question our memory of an incident?  Police reports abound with witnesses who saw multiple different things at the same time.  Are they lying?  Is their memory faulty?  Or did they all just see different things?

Can you trust yourself?  That’s the question the book presents as we inwardly debate Grace Winter’s reliability.  Are we more or less reliable than her?  If so, why?  We think we know how we might act in such a situation as hers, but we really don’t know until we’re put in that situation.  We wonder if our own character has flaws that will be embarrassingly revealed under pressure.  We desire to be tried and tested, but are afraid we, too, will be found wanting.

The Lifeboat is a book to read in one sitting, if you have the time.  One sitting is the closest way to experience what the characters are experiencing, a situation that they cannot leave or put down to come back to.  One sitting allows the paranoia in the story to grow on a reader so that by the end you are questioning everything, yet have this nagging feeling that that’s just what the author wants, and that you’ve fallen into the trap.  You have been manipulated, but not by Grace.  I look forward to reading further work by Ms. Rogan.  She has talent, and perhaps most importantly, genuine storytelling ability.