Ten novels told by unusual narrators

BBC.com Culture’s Lucy Scholes tagged Ian McEwan’s new novel Nutshell (narrated by a fetus) and nine more novels told by strange narrators, including:

Jenny Diski, Like Mother (1988)

McEwan’s unborn narrator is striking enough, but he’s not the first author to turn to the narrative possibilities of an exceptional baby. Jenny Diski’s Like Mother is narrated by an anhydranencephalic baby – born without a brain. ‘Nony’ (from ‘Nonentity’) narrates the story of her mother Frances’s life: “I want to pass the time. I have nothing but the story of my mother to tell… I have a gift to compensate for my empty skull.” Diski negotiates the problem of logic by making us suspend our disbelief; it’s “a story told in imagined words,” Nony explains, told to “an imagined listener.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Sarah Skilton's six most unusual YA narrators.

--Marshal Zeringue