Writers revel in their depiction of character, but the reader should never wholly trust the voices within a text.

In the break down of Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum, we learn as the reader, that the protagonist who is the narrator is to an extent unreliable. The footnote that are included in the novel, provide time shifts, which flash back, into times as early as her Great Grandmother. This then leads the reader into thinking whom it is possible that Ruby has access to the information and description seen in these footnotes. The Narrator also provides elements of the future in her speech, the death of Gillian is referred too before the event has taken place, again we are given an example of how the readers should be hesitant when giving their trust to the voices in the text. Similarly with Charles Dickens Great Expectations, the narrator writes in past tense indicating that the novel is written by memory. This would leads the reader to question quite how advanced his memory must be in order for the protagonist to recall memory with such detail and depth. It is quite unreasonable to believe that this is possible.

The closer we break down Atkinson’s novel the more we realize that narrator is very much unreliable. Whilst the writer may ‘revel in their depiction of character’ the reader must pay closer attention to the reliability of the writers characters. The use of footnotes provides the reader with flashbacks into the history of Ruby’s family. However the reader is quick to question how the narrator has access to this information. “Nell didn’t know whether she’d never loved Percy properly or whether she simply couldn’t remember what it was like to love Percy…” From the footnotes we see that Nell and Bunty very much share the same pattern in life, both have experienced love lossed and marrying a man who was not their first choice. This may be the reason why they both show a certain lack of emotion when we as humans would expect them to show it. Despite the death of Percy, Nell shows how quickly she is able to move on from a previous love forgetting what it