…….dhole

One way it’s a horror story, the other way it’s a psychological thriller.

The importance thing is to understand the concern, and therefore the logic, of the narrator. In this case it was her overriding concern for the children, a concern that became obsessive, and in that state other people thought she was unreliable. But her logic was true to her own understanding.

This is the place for ‘less is more.’ If you push the character too far, you lose the reader. But if you merely hint, the reader will assemble the character in his/her own head in the manner you desire. You want the reader to trust the narrator, but that trust slowly becomes fragile. Then the reader gets to a point where they want to trust the narrator, but it’s getting harder to do. Never take the reader beyond that point. As soon as you settle the inner argument in the reader’s mind that the narrator is mad or bad, then you have lost the essential contact.

And in terms of Christopher in ‘Curious Incident..’ He is only logical as we would see it when he is doing logic puzzles, Most other logic is of his own invention, such as ’seeing three brown cars in one morning means it’s a good day.’ But it is this self-invented logic that controls most of his behaviour. Christopher draws emotional attachment from the reader nonetheless as we somehow get to understand his need for such logic so we keep our trust in him as narrator.