My objective in this essay was to find evidence of the narrator’s unreliability in A Pale View of Hills, both in the content and in the structure. I also aimed at finding possible reasons for this unreliability. The narrator in the novel, Etsuko, gives us a structurally fragmented narration as she is relying on memories to tell her story. These memories are not chronologically ordered but come to her as they are evoked by present events, such as her second daughter’s arrival. Furthermore, fragmentation is present in Etsuko’s unclear breaks between present and past narration. On several occasions it is not fully clear until a few sentences into a new paragraph where and when the event is taking place. I have also established that Etsuko exemplifies Walkowitz’s content-oriented definition of an unreliable narrator by engaging in self-deception and thus being perceived as being the story rather than telling one. The stories she presents about her former friend Sachiko turns out to be her own. This has been shown through a number of slips, give-aways and interpretive commentaries. Also, she is unable to detect this self-deception and is therefore making judgements about her own past that collide with the readers’ expectations. It is perhaps in this collision that her unreliability becomes most striking. In addition, the gaps she leaves in her story and the information she chooses to omit add to her unreliability. This unreliability can be attributed to her feelings of guilt and shame regarding her daughter Keiko’s suicide and the disloyalty Etsuko herself showed her Japanese family when she moved to England. The mere imbalance between present and past narration indicates that Etsuko is deeply troubled by her earlier events. As she gradually reconstructs the past she also involves herself in a self-identifying process which results in her retreating back into old Japanese values; her attempt to become truly English has failed and she resorts to nostalgia.