I've also been bothered by the notion of an "unreliable" narrator  which implies that there's an objective  True story to be told outside of the character's subjective experience An unreliable narrator can't just be somebody who is telling the story from his own perspective  it has to be somebody who is purposely and intentionally manipulating the "facts " or who is perhaps acting as or writing as an omniscient narrator when he has no true omniscience