Talk:When We Were Orphans

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he does not go to his grandother in england, he goes to his aunt.

That's right, it's his aunt. I'll change it. Skinnyweed 15:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Having just finished the book, I'm left wondering to what extent we can believe anything that this narrator tells us about what might or might not have 'happened'. Isn't it just possible, for instance, that the woman he describes as his mother at the end of the novel is no-one of the sort? He doesn't want to take her home, doesn't wish her to be buried there and she doesn't physically resemble his mother. Maybe she is a manifestation of his wishes or regrets. Equally, I don't accept at face value the description of what happened to his parents. His mother became a prostitute to save him from destitution? Could it be that this is childhood guilt and shame finding expression / resolution through a terrible sort of fantasy?

On a basic level - with a narrator this unreliable, how can we relate the 'story' in a meaningful way? I'd be very interested in your thoughts.

Just a note, not sure how this compares with wikipedia policy, but some of this article reads very similarly to the the review from Publishers Weekly, accessible from Amazon. Alistair 19/12/07 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.242.143.170 (talk) 07:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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BetacommandBot (talk) 15:37, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Summary too naive and lacking depth

The plot summary seems to be a fairly naive, almost like a straightforward reading of the novel. Although some concessions are made about the lack of clarity on some facts from Christoper's life (e.g. how exactly did he become such a famous detective?), it is not adequately conveyed that this is a case of a extremely unreliable narrator. From the first pages the reader is given clues that other people have perceptions of Christopher very different from his own. Almost every alleged fact from his narration -- that is to say, the whole book, since he narrates it -- is called into question. The narration gets stranger and stranger as the story progresses; the whole story about his parents is completely unclear. The whole section about his recovery of his childhood house, now inhabited by Chinese people, is downright surreal. Not mentioning the less straightforward reading of this novel is doing the book a disservice. This is definitely NOT a detective story! 201.231.81.83 (talk) 02:27, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]