Best Novels Told From Multiple Perspectives
TL;DR — For thrillers, read Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, where narrators contradict each other. For family sagas, The Poisonwood Bible or Homegoing. For a marriage seen from both sides, Fates and Furies. For something experimental, As I Lay Dying or Lincoln in the Bardo. For epic fantasy, A Song of Ice and Fire.
Get book picks based on this article
Want a novel to match your mood? Get book picks built for it.
Get book picksTell us your mood. We'll do the picking.
8 quick questions. Real book picks from real catalogs — not ads. Free, no sign-up.
Take the quizThrillers: narrators who contradict each other
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn (2012). On their fifth anniversary, Amy Dunne vanishes. Chapters alternate between her husband Nick in the present and Amy's diary from the past, until the midpoint changes how you read everything before it.
The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins (2015). Rachel, a commuter who drinks too much, Megan, the woman she watches from the train, and Anna, her ex-husband's new wife. Each knows part of what happened, and none can be fully trusted.
Family sagas
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998). Nathan Price drags his family to the Belgian Congo in 1959 as a Baptist missionary. His wife and four daughters narrate, each so distinct that you can tell who's speaking within a sentence.
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi (2016). Two half-sisters in 18th-century Ghana: one marries a British slaver, the other is sold into slavery. Each chapter follows the next generation down one line or the other, ending in the present day.
Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff (2015). The first half, "Fates," tells Lotto and Mathilde's marriage from his side; the second, "Furies," from hers, and it's a very different story.
Experimental
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner (1930). The Bundren family take their mother's body to be buried in her hometown, narrated in 59 short sections by 15 voices, including, once, the dead mother herself.
Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders (2017). After Abraham Lincoln's son Willie dies in 1862, the ghosts of the cemetery argue and gossip around him, interleaved with real and invented historical accounts. Funny, strange and deeply moving. Booker Prize winner.
Epic fantasy
A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin (1996 onward). Every chapter is limited to one character's point of view, from Ned and Arya Stark to Tyrion Lannister, so the reader always knows more than any one character and less than the whole truth.
Our verdict
Start with The Poisonwood Bible if you want a big, absorbing novel, or Gone Girl if you want to read it in a weekend. Save As I Lay Dying for when you're ready for a challenge.
Frequently asked questions
Which classic novel has the most narrators? As I Lay Dying has 15 narrators across 59 short chapters. Lincoln in the Bardo goes further, with well over 100 voices.
Why do authors use multiple perspectives? To show how differently people see the same events, to create suspense by withholding what one character knows, or to cover a story too big for one person, like Homegoing's three centuries.
Want a book for your mood?
Our book quiz can suggest your next read based on how you feel.