The Inadequate Narrator

The below essay, by Stephan Freißmann goes into a little more detail as to what the “I see everything” quote and the memory as film analogy means for the novel, and fleshes out an observation that was made in an earlier post. It explains much better what I was trying to convey, when I called into question Christopher’s memory. Read the second section, titled “The Curious Incident as Narrative Thinking.”

http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/journals/partial_answers/v006/6.2.freissmann.html

Another source that can help us understand both the above article and my own thoughts is the first installment of an analysis of the book by John Mullan, a senior lecturer in English at University College London. In his piece for the UK publication The Guardian linked here http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/apr/24/fiction.markhaddon

he calls Christopher an “inadequate narrator,” a term he uses to replace the term “unreliable narrator” which he says doesn’t fit. Christopher is, after all, a very reliable narrator. He writes about the events that happen exactly as they happen. However much he remembers about the events, he will often misunderstand them. While the reader can piece together what these events actually mean, Christopher is left in the dark.