Narration is an integral part of storytelling. In a story, the narrator relays all of the information needed for the reader to understand what they’re reading. Whether the story is told in first, second, third person, or whether the narrator is all-knowing, the person telling the story is crucial to understanding the story. But narrators can sometimes be untrustworthy. Everything they’re saying could be a lie, squashing everything one thought they knew underfoot. These types of narrators exist. Encountering one can be rare. An unreliable narrator can be found in The Go Between by Veronica Chambers, where the main character and narrator, Camilla de Valle, reveals her unreliability through her thoughts and actions.

In the book, Camilla proves herself to be a pathological liar time and time again. Her untruthful ways emerge when she begins attending Polestar, a high end school full of rich kids, and is mistaken as a scholarship student from a lower-class background. That, of course, is not the case, but instead of correcting the error, she decides to go along with it. This starts a chain of lies upon lies. She even goes as far as fabricating up a nonexistent child in order to cover up a lie about having a babysitting job. She’s almost been found out many times, but she always managed to lie her way to safety. (Chambers, 89-94) Her unreliability is blatant in this situation. She lies to her friends, family, and mentors throughout the entire book, taking all of them as fools. Who’s to say that she isn’t lying to the reader the whole time? Can someone with a history of deception as bad as Camilla’s be trusted to recount events effectively? Also, the story is told from Camilla’s point of view, meaning that she could be saying whatever she wants. Tsk, tsk, Miss de Valle.

Another sign of narrative unpredictability is overjustification. Throughout the ENTIRE BOOK, Camilla tries to justify her actions. This is shown here. “So when I started lying at my new school, it felt like a kindness, going along with my friends expectations.” (Chambers, 97) And here. “‘They’re the ones who jumped to all sorts of conclusions about me being poor and a scholarship student’” (Chambers, 101) And here “‘It’s true that I pretended to be something I’m not. But it’s also true that you guys had a lot of crazy preconceptions about what it means to be Mexican.’” (Chambers,160) And in a whole bunch of other places. This type of behavior is a sign of an unreliable narrator. Actually, this could also be a sign of mental deficiency. Someone who thinks they’re in the right all the time, every time cannot be right in the head. To make matters worse, while in the middle of her lying ways, Camilla enjoys it, as if it’s some sort of game, a trick she’s pulling on everyone in her life that ever cared about her. Maybe this book should have been written in third person.

The final, and maybe the most questionable symptom of unpredictable narration found in Camilla is her mental stability. A recurring theme throughout the book is how Camilla feels weighed down by her mother’s superstardom. “But he was a boy, and no one ever compared him to our mother.” (Chambers,17) She repeatedly expresses that she feels like she is being deflated by all of the comparisons to her mom. This reveals that there was a lot of unseen pressure on her mind. Combine this with her brother moving away, her mother’s tabloid issues “‘What I hate is how this is bringing all of those old rumors back.’” (Chambers, 38), her best friendship ending, moving to an unfamiliar, and keeping up with her lies, and here is an individual that is under a LOT of stress. This could alter her judgement and perception of the world. For these reasons, and probably a whole lot more, a person like Camilla wouldn’t be the best person to trust with a task as important as narration. Camilla might’ve believed that everything she’d said was true, and that everything she did and thought was okay. Polestar is supposed to be one of the best schools. They should have a good counselor or shrink (or mental facility) that Camilla can go to.

Camilla would probably a pretty good person in real life, but she’s misguided and needs urgent help. Either way, hiring her as a narrator probably wouldn’t be the best decision ever made. Her incessant untruthfulness, her superiority complex, and all of the weight on her mind means that Camilla is better off sticking with her lying ways than being hired as a narrator that’s unreliable and unpredictable. She could be good at fiction though.