New Leaf Nominations for November 2018 • Lies and Misdirections: Unreliable Narrators

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I nominate Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955, 348 pp.).

This was the selection literary club selection in February 2013 so is not eligible yet for the NLBC (next year).

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

This was the selection literary club selection in February 2013 so is not eligible yet for the NLBC (next year).

Thanks, Dazrin. I missed out a few posts while I was posting and I was just coming back here to say that. Pity. It's a wonderful book and perfect for this theme. (And it would have been a good excuse for me to listen to the Jeremy Irons' narration.)

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I have a marked preference for something I can get as an audiobook. The less interest I have in a title, the more price, lack of library availability, and length become factors.

Agreed. I'll read whatever's chosen, but these factors can affect my vote.

Originally Posted by CRussel

As for PD works? Well, the price is right. But my sense is that they run the risk of not being as successful as we anticipate. (Whose Body and T3M come to mind immediately.)

Hence my hesitancy.

[Catlady]

Aw, phooey. Sorry, I never checked. Oh well. There's a new book out about the case that inspired the novel--The Real Lolita by Sarah Weinman--so I'm planning to read both anyway.

[gmw]

I thought it was interesting to see Wikipedia's list of fiction with unreliable narrators. After my comments on our last discussion I was pleased to see Never Let Me Go on there. Also pleased to see Agatha Christie's Endless Night made the list - one of my favourites of hers, much better (in my eye) than the better known The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (because that always felt like a cheat to me). But it's missing Grisham's The Racketeer (though it is mentioned in their explanation page) ... I'd vote for the The Racketeer if someone wants to nominate it, it's a good read.

[issybird]

I've been bouncing around among several options and have finally decided to go with The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley. Even those who haven't read it will know its famous opening line, "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." People may also have seen the film with Julie Christie and Alan Bates; I wasn't aware of a 2015 BBC production until I started looking at links.

I'm going to borrow bits from Goodreads and Wikipedia, as I think both are a little too revealing.

Summering with a fellow schoolboy on a great English estate, Leo, the hero of L. P. Hartley's finest novel, encounters a world of unimagined luxury. . . . The Go-Between is a masterpiece—a richly layered, spellbinding story about past and present, naiveté and knowledge, and the mysteries of the human heart.

The book gives a critical view of society at the end of the Victorian era through the eyes of a naïve schoolboy outsider.

In the book’s prologue, Leo Colston chances upon a diary from 1900, the year of his thirteenth birthday, and gradually pieces together a memory that he has suppressed. Under its influence, and from the viewpoint of what he has become by the midpoint of “this hideous century”, Leo relives the events of what had once seemed to him its hopeful beginning.

The price is slightly outside our US parameter, but cheaper in the UK and Canada and available on OverDrive and Audible. I also figure it's readily available in print for those who don't mind that.

Amazon US $10.99 | Amazon UK £4.99 | Amazon CA $10.99 | Amazon AU $14.99

344 pp.

[Bookpossum]

I shall use my other two votes to:

Third One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and

Second The Go-Between.

I have never read the Kesey (though I saw the film a great many years ago). I have read and loved the Hartley, and would very happily read it again. Highly recommended!

[Catlady]

The Go-Between was nominated just a few months back for the summer theme.

Here's the poll.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

The Go-Between was nominated just a few months back for the summer theme.

Whoops! Of course it was.

Thanks for the correction.

ETA: Bookpossum, you've got your third nomination back.

Back to the drawing board for me.

[Catlady]

How do you do the strike-through? I should do that with poor Lolita.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

How do you do the strike-through? I should do that with poor Lolita.

strike and /strike inside brackets.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

strike and /strike inside brackets.

Thanks. Done!

[issybird]

Alrighty, let's try again.

This time, I'm going to nominate Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay. While the book is told in the third person, I think it qualifies as that nebulous concept the unreliable third person narrator, as it starts off, "Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves." The issue of the truthfulness of the testimonies of the various witnesses to the event also fits in with the notion of lies and misdirections. There's a famous film and I see there's also a recent series which is available at Amazon Prime.

From Wikipedia:

Picnic at Hanging Rock is an Australian historical fiction novel by Joan Lindsay. Set in 1900, it is about a group of female students at an Australian girls' boarding school who vanish at Hanging Rock while on a Valentine's Day picnic, and the effects the disappearances have on the school and local community. The novel was first published in 1967 in Australia by Cheshire Publishing and was reprinted by Penguin in 1975. It is widely considered by critics to be one of the best Australian novels.

Although the events depicted in the novel are entirely fictional, it is framed as though it is a true story, corroborated by ambiguous pseudohistorical references. Its irresolute conclusion has sparked significant public, critical, and scholarly analysis, and the narrative has become a part of Australia's national folklore as a result.

Amazon US $5.99 | Amazon UK £4.99 | Amazon AU $10.99 | Amazon CA $14.99 | Audible | OverDrive

198 pp.

[Catlady]

I'm nominating Mind of Winter by Laura Kasischke (2014, 293 pp.)

The critically acclaimed and bestselling author of The Raising returns with a haunting and shadowy thriller about the love between a mother and daughter.

Something had followed them from Russia.

On a snowy Christmas morning, Holly Judge awakens, the fragments of a nightmare—something so important that she must write it down—floating on the edge of her consciousness.

Something had followed them from Russia.

It was thirteen years ago that she and her husband, Eric, went to Siberia to adopt the sweet, dark-haired child they had wanted so desperately. How they laughed at the nurses of Pokrovka Orphanage #2 with their garlic and superstitions, and ignored their insistent warnings. After all, their fairy princess Tatiana—Baby Tatty—was perfect.

As the snow falls, enveloping the world in its white silence, Holly senses that something is not right, and has never been right in the years since they brought their daughter home. Now Tatty is a dangerously beautiful, petulant, and often erratic teenager, and Holly feels there is something evil lurking within their house.

She and Tatiana are alone. Eric is stuck on the roads, and none of the other guests for Christmas dinner will be able to make it through the snow. With each passing hour, the blizzard rages and Tatiana's mood darkens, her behavior becoming increasingly disturbing . . . until, in every mother's worst nightmare, Holly finds she no longer recognizes her daughter.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Holly Judge wakes up on Christmas morning knowing “Something had followed them home from Russia.” Trapped at home with her teenage daughter during a blizzard, Holly’s thoughts drift back to the trips she and her husband took to Siberia’s Pokrovka Orphanage #2 to adopt baby Tatiana. Versions of those visits change as the day progresses. Holly’s slow revelations about what drove her to adopt and her own family history cause the reader to become even more suspicious of Holly’s increasingly confused descriptions of the day’s events. Whatever happened in Russia, something, or someone, in that house is not right. The slow, cold menace in the book is palpable. As a reader, you know that something horrible is going to be revealed—something awful and inevitable. And, when you finally force yourself to turn that last page, it will not be a scream that gets caught in your throat, but a gut-punching, heart-wrenching sob. A book that will haunt you for days and long, long nights after reading. --Karen Keefe

Amazon U.S., $10.74
Amazon Canada, CA $9.99
Amazon UK, £4.74
Amazon Australia, AU $7.47

Kobo U.S., $10.74
Kobo Canada, $9.99
Kobo UK, £4.79
Kobo Australia, AU $8.13

Available through Overdrive (e-book and audiobook), Hoopla (e-book and audiobook), RB Digital (audiobook), Axis360 (e-book), Freading (e-book), Scribd (e-book and audiobook).

[darryl]

I'll second Picnic at Hanging Rock.