Unreliable
A Novel
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- €4.49
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- €4.49
Publisher Description
Riotous and riveting, this is the story of a charming college professor who most definitely did not—but maybe did—kill his ex-wife. Or someone else. Or no one. Irby plays with the thriller trope in unimaginably clever ways.
Edwin Stith, a failed novelist and college writing instructor in upstate New York, is returning home for the weekend to Richmond, Virginia, to celebrate his mother's wedding—to a much younger man. Edwin has a peculiar relationship with the truth. He is a liar who is brutally honest. He may or may not be sleeping with his students, he may or may not be getting fired, and he may or may not have killed his ex-wife, a lover, and his brand-new stepsister.
Stith's dysfunctional homecoming leads him deep into a morass of long-gestating secrets and dangers, of old-flames still burning strong and new passions ready to consume everything he holds dear. But family dysfunction is only eclipsed by Edwin's own, leading to profound suspense and utter hilarity. Lee Irby has crafted a sizzling modern classic of dark urges, lies, and secrets that harks back to the unsettling obsessions of Edgar Allan Poe—with a masterful ending that will have you thinking for days.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Writing instructor and failed novelist Edwin Stith, the narrator of this irksome suspense novel from Irby (The Up and Up), teaches at Notting College, "a leafy liberal arts school" in Ithaca, N.Y. Stith who may or may not have killed his ex-wife and others is a paranoid mess and envisions murdering women while waiting to be charged with a crime. His love-hate relationship with his ex-wife was complicated by another bond, this one with a former student who enjoys sleeping with well-endowed men and sending the impotent Stith the photographic evidence. His life becomes exponentially more convoluted when he meets his future family members at his mother's wedding in Richmond, Va., and becomes entangled in a shady arms deal that may be connected to a domestic terrorism attack. The unreliable narrator shtick gets old fast, especially since Stith can be insufferable. The startling revelation at the end makes up only in part for the passages about Stith's delusions and his obsession with the part of his anatomy he refers to as his phantom limb.
