In crime fiction, it's the identity of the killer that's open to question. In literary fiction, it's the identity of almost everybody. At least two recent novels by Australians feature male characters who turn out to be secretly female. Even those books which you would expect to owe almost everything to the beauty of their language have the obligatory little twist in the tail. I wonder how far this trend is going to go.
Unreliable narratives create suspicious readers.
James Thurber once wrote a piece about a crime novel fan, a woman who had read Macbeth and became convinced that Shakespeare was hiding something. Thurber meant his piece as a parody, but I'm not so sure. I reckon she was onto something, that woman. I have a feeling I have still more literary innocence to lose. The Age Company Ltd 2001.