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The narration in Three Horses is written in first person. After all, the very first word is “I,” as in “I only read used books.” Is this narrator unreliable, that is to say, sometimes mistaken? A tricky question, because the entire book is written from this protagonist’s perspective. It’s hard to know if he’s sometimes mistaken—all the reader gets is him. Maybe he sometimes reads new books—we the readers don’t know. One of the characteristics of first-person narration is unre

Usually, in this blog, I don’t want to merely describe the plots of the books I discuss in the manner of a book review. My purpose is to examine structures in fiction, particularly narrational strategies. But the plot in Three Horses really demands some explication before we can proceed. Because of the book’s style, the story is not immediately clear. An unnamed narrator, self-described as a fifty-year old gardener, encounters a younger woman named Laila in a restaurant. She