Slippages of Meaning: Difference, Memory, and Unreliable Voice in Fiona Neill’s The Betrayals

Abstract

This paper explores Fiona Neill's The Betrayals through Jacques Derrida's framework of différance, focusing particularly on how betrayal, trauma, and memory resist closure. Rather than offering definitive accounts, the novel resists definitive closure, presenting meaning as deferred, contingent upon unstable language and mutable perspectives. Employing four unreliable narrators, the novel dramatizes Derridian notion that meaning is constituted through difference, not presence. Daisy and Max embody the psychic toll of fragmented memory as their search for meaning in past events is thwarted by gaps, silences, and dissonance. These textual disjunctions highlight the dilemma of securing a fixed truth as memory emerges as a construct both formed and fractured by affective imprints. The novel thus enacts différance: a narrative where discordant voices never reconcile and interpretation remains endlessly deferred