#credit to my friend oplishin for the point about valery's autism

[tubercloset]

I'm debating the definition of unreliable narrators with my friends and I think that natasha pulley characters just aren't the best examples of them. The two main parts of being an unreliable narrator are 1) their perception of reality is wrong 2) they are withholding information that would significantly change the reader's perception of them.

I'm not going to comment on Thaniel because I don't really remember much about watchmaker honestly, but I feel that there is a case to be made somewhere. As for Merrick, I really do not think there's anything about him that's unreliable. He withholds the reason his leg was injured, but that's just an important piece of backstory that doesn't tell you anything new about the kind of person he is. Other people can pitch in their opinions on these two guys.

Like the @onaa-ohokthen said, Joe would be an unreliable narrator if he actually remembers more than he lets on, but the narrative doesn't quite give any indication that he does. His perception of events is pretty objective as well.

I think Valery is unreliable because he withholds information about what he did at the prison. That information explicitly alters your perception of his character into someone who actually can emotionally manipulate people and commit crimes in line with his personal moral compass. He's not necessarily unreliable for perceiving emotional cues incorrectly because that's a result of his autism, trauma, and profoundly low self-esteem. You can easily tell what is actually true about other characters' perceptions of him, although you can also say those reasons don't matter because he is literally wrong about everything, in which case that's another reason why he's unreliable.

In the end I think there are far clearer examples of unreliable narration to be found in other books, like someone who is paranoid and sees everyone as their enemy, a character who withholds information about themselves to portray themselves in a more positive light, or a psychological thriller protagonist who misremembers the events of their life in a way that influences the narrative and completely misleads the reader. Or a guy who hallucinates heartbeat noises