Passing

1929, from the same Rutgers University Press edition as Quicksand
Nella Larsen
Passing
B

Although this story is told in the third-person, the protagonist, Irene, does qualify as an unreliable narrator.  She imagines that she knows everyone's motives, even when it's things like imagining her unflirtatious husband having an affair with her friend Clare.  Irene apparently murders Clare by pushing her out a window, but she can't quite admit this to the reader or herself.

As the labels indicate, this short novel is notable in both African-American and LGBT literary history, although the latter is often missed by critics.  Hypocritical Irene passes as white in restaurants and theaters, but she disapproves of the level that one-quarter white Clare passes at, with Clare having married a bigoted white man who's so ignorant of her background that he affectionately nicknames her "Nig."  Clare and Irene run into each other after many years, and it starts a hunger in Clare for the company of blacks, particularly Irene.  She's playing with fire (Larsen uses fire imagery often), but sensible, safe Irene seems worried beyond sense.

Even if you don't buy that Irene has an unspoken desire for Clare, there is something off about her reactions to Clare.  In the quite good Introduction, Deborah E. McDowell points out the distance between what Irene says about everything, including her own motives, and what the reality is.  She also underscores passages where Irene is drawn to Clare's beauty.  McDowell argues that the entire novel is passing, pretending to be just a novel about pretending to be another race, while it's also a novel about pretending to be straight.  When I read the novel in a college course, taught by an awesome lesbian professor, I wrote a paper arguing that Irene is afraid of all passion and desire, and not just sexual.  She's also afraid of her husband's longing for Brazil.

In any case, Passing is an interesting read however you take it and, unlike with some of Woolf and Colette, the ambiguity enhances the story.