What makes for a great first-person narrative?

First-person narratives tend to live or die on the strength of the narrative voice - not necessarily a good thing. Some narrative voices are distinct and powerful enough to carry the weight, e.g., Holden Caulfield. Others, though, you have to wonder: could this story be told in the 3rd person, and if it were would there be anything to it? What's a great first-person narrative? For me, for the most part, it's a narrative with a distinctive voice but one that does not draw undue attention to itself, and a stor that could just as well be told in third person, that is, a story with some plot to it rather than a series of thinly related ruminations. And in fact I can reverse this a bit, and note that a great third-person narrative almost gives you the impression that it's first-person: The Rabbit novels, for example, are so closely associated with Rabbit Angstrom's tone and point of view that I bet many readers, thinking back, mistakenly remember them as if they're first-person. Vendela Vida's "Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name" has a distinct first-person narrator (Clarissa), who's witty and edgy - but my concern with the novel, about half-way through, is that her voice is in service of what? It's one of the many quest/road trip novels: character goes off in search of... usually, as in this case, a parent (often a sibling, departed lover, etc.). These can work well, but too often, as in this case, they're just sequential events. Vida has nicely adapted the first-person tone of many noirish narrators (Marlowe et al.), but she could do better with a more noirish plot. for example, Clarissa locates her long-lost Finnish father by looking him up in the phone book and calling him. Couldn't there have been more dramatic tension here? Vida's a really good writer, I will continue reading this book, and I do want to read her newest because I think she shows a lot of potential, but this one is a little sketchy.