With her fourth psychological thriller with Hera Books – Under Her Roof – recently released, A.A. Chaudhuri explains the importance of the flawed narrator and its impact on the plot…
There are so many reasons why I love psychological thrillers. A twist that floors you, nerve-wracking tension and a deep sense of unease, along with spine-tingling cliffhangers that keep you reading late into the night are three iconic traits that make it so compelling for me and readers far and wide. But what really drives these and other traits? What defines the psychological thriller as a genre that keeps readers on edge and messes with their minds? For me, it has to be the flawed narrator. When you consider the most venerated psychological thrillers, they have all had one thing in common: unreliable narrators who essentially define the books in themselves. Take Amy Dunne in Gone Girl, Tyler Durden in Fight Club, Rachel Watson in Girl On A Train. These iconic characters, who between them hold dark secrets and afflictions that make readers doubt their reliability and yet have a vulnerability that draws their empathy, have an immense impact on the plot, thereby making it more thrilling and unputdownable. In short, they are larger-than-life protagonists who infiltrate readers’ psyches so powerfully, they end up lingering in their minds long after the final page has been turned.
All my stories are told through multiple narrators, several of whom are deeply unreliable! I love creating interesting intriguing characters with some sort of affliction, addiction or dark secret, thereby causing readers to be on their guard, but also engrossed in the book because they’re desperate to find out what happens.
In my new release, struggling writer, Sebastian, rents a room in the palatial Hampstead mansion of troubled, mysterious widow, Adriana, despite his misgivings centring on her strange rules and the fact that the last lodger died in tragic circumstances. Things soon take an ominous turn for Sebastian when he realises that both he and his landlady are being watched, and that the terrifying situation he finds himself in may be linked to Adriana’s troubled past. From early on, I make it clear to my reader that both are hiding dark secrets. Secrets that haunt them. We don’t know what those secrets are initially, of course, but we know from experiencing their inner turmoil, shame and guilt through the first-person narrative that they can’t be good. In this way, the tension and intrigue accelerates, and we, the readers, have no idea if we can trust Sebastian and Adriana, even though we want to because it’s clear they’re inherently good people.
‘Secrets’ that a character might be ashamed of and/or determined to keep buried because their exposure threatens their freedom or life or the lives of loves ones, is one of the ways to make a narrator unreliable. An addiction or affliction is another way. However you choose to make your character flawed, it has to be serious enough to draw suspicion in readers’ minds, but at the same time you want to give your character other redeeming features that help readers to connect with, and even empathise, with them. It’s almost like you want the reader to be in turmoil themselves in sympathising with the character but simultaneously feeling suspicious of them. In Under Her Roof, both Adriana and Sebastian have suffered untold grief and tragedy in their lives, and by almost exclusively focusing on this two-person narrative, this enabled me to delve deeply into their characters and psyches, thereby enabling my readers to hopefully connect with, but also want to root for them, despite not being entirely sure of their motives. And if, as an author, you have succeeded in inducing empathy from your readers towards your character, that iconic twist can prove to be that much more spectacular, Gone Girl’s shocking mid-twist being a prime example of this (but also hopefully my own, something I don’t want to say too much about!), because the reader isn’t expecting it.
Psychological thriller fans love the genre for its relatability, but also because of its tension and intrigue, and the flawed narrator is key to maintaining that tension in misleading readers or obscuring the truth from them, whether deliberately or not. They mess with readers’ minds, and we, as psychological addicts, love that! In turn, we feel more invested in the plot, and determined to find out the truth.
Under Her Roof is out now with Hera Books in e-book and paperback and with Isis Audio in audiobook.
