Unusual Narrators
Books where the narrating character is... different.
created by kathytrithardt
last updated October, 2025
Comments
open throat by henry hoke! protagonist/narrator is a queer mountain lion who lives under the hollywood sign in LA. the entire thing is half stream-of-consciousness half poetry verses. very weird!
YESSSSS, thank you! I had heard of that, but I think it was after I made this list. Added! It sounds remarkable.
Maybe also Bunny by Mona Awad and, THE novel about unreliable narration, Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood? And, again, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki might fit here since one of the two main characters is the author herself as a character in the book. The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ozeki is mainly told by "The Book" itself, so that might also fit?
Little caveat, I'm not sure how many of these books feature the character as an actual narrator rather than a focalizer - I think most have extradiegetic/third-person narration. Most people don't really distinguish between the two, but I wanted to mention it in case you do haha Also, I'm not sure if I got the spirit of the list, but I found the narration in these books very unusual.
Thanks for this! I added both of the Ruth Ozeki books, as I have read ATftTB and it was definitely unusual. And the second one clearly qualifies, given The Book itself is narrating. I'll have to look into the others.
Also, I am guilty of using Narrator as a stand in word for Protagonist (specifically for the title of this list), when I do know they have different meanings. I think for most of these the narrator was also the protagonist, but I am so rarely one to remember if something was written in 1/2/3 person. So good catch on that, and that's by bad, but, like, I just wanted to make a list where the main characters were death, a crow, bees, and child, a grim reaper - honestly just sounds like a fascinating literary party, right?
Perfect, thanks! I think for regular book talks, conflating narrator and main character is fine. We're not doing science here, and I think the list is a super cool idea. I'm just working for my uni's English lit department and my boss is a pretty old-school narratologist, so I've gotten very used to not calling the protagonist the narrator and vice versa. It's a cardinal sin in the office š I haven't read any of the other books on the list except The Book Thief and didn't know if the others only feature characters-as-narrators, so I wanted to make sure I'm not accidentally recommending something that shouldn't be here.
I really love books with unusual or highly "visible" narration, one of my favorite things!
I love this list! Now I want to read them all! In the book iām currently reading (The island of the missing trees), part of the story is told by a fig tree. Not the main narrator i would say, so it probably doesnāt count but it does make me curious to books with unusual narrators.
A fig tree telling part of the story is very cool, though! I reminders me of Stay Another Day where we get some sections from the perspective of the family home.
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