In 2017, I wrote a post about novels with unlikable characters and how we might still like those novels – or maybe not.
I noted nine years ago that “we hope the story line is compelling enough and the writing impressive enough to make up for the absence of congenial characters.” Humor can help, too.
The five books I cited in that post were mostly readable despite the downer characters – and perhaps partly because of them. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, Andre Dubus III’s House of Sand and Fog, Emile Zola’s Therese Raquin, and John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces.
Today, I’m going to use this same theme to discuss five more novels – all of which I’ve read or reread since 2017 — starting with the 2012 bestseller Gone Girl that I finally got to last week.
Gillian Flynn’s two protagonists – Amy and Nick – were so off-putting that I almost stopped reading after a few dozen pages. Both were what we would’ve called “yuppies” back in the day: young urban professionals a little too spoiled and a little too full of themselves.
But I soldiered on, and Gone Girl became quite original and riveting in a very twisted way before going off the rails (in my opinion) toward the end.
As with many other books featuring unlikable protagonists, it helps when you have supporting characters who are at least somewhat appealing. Gives a reader a person or two to latch onto. In Gone Girl, Nick’s twin sister Margo is mostly likable — even as several other supporting characters (such as Nick’s hateful aged father and the obsessed-with-Amy/passive-aggressive Desi) are loathsome.
Fifty years earlier, we had Shirley Jackson’s 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle in which virtually every character is unpleasant or greedy or weird or antisocial. That was Jackson’s intent, and she was very good at that in this and her other best-known works. But one does feel some sympathy and sorrow for certain characters, and I think that was the author’s intent, too.
Most of the major players in Hilary Mantel’s historical novel Wolf Hall (2009) are far from lovable. When there’s royalty and “court intrigue,” you’re going to get a lot calculating, ruthlessness, sucking up, etc.
Agatha Christie’s ingeniously plotted 1939 mystery And Then There Were None features a cast in which every featured character is guilty in some way. Still, we can empathize with their ordeal after they’re invited to gather together by a person with murder on the mind.
A decade later, Daphne du Maurier’s The Parasites was published. I included that 1949 novel in a post last month about entertainers in fiction, and the pampered/irresponsible show-biz family (father, mother, daughter, son) in du Maurier’s book is certainly not one you’d want on your holiday card list. The non-show-biz other daughter is a little more sympathetic in a self-sacrificing way, but does not elicit much respect.
Comments about, and examples of, this theme?
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Dave Astor on Literature 
Great post.
Your observation about the need for a compelling plot or an engaging secondary character to balance out unlikable protagonists is spot on.
It reminds me of Don Rodrigo, the character from Alessandro Manzoni’s 1827 masterpiece, The Betrothed, a novel I’ve often mentioned and which for generations was required reading in all Italian high schools.
Don Rodrigo is an arrogant and detestable tyrant who upends the lives of innocent peasants out of pure malice and a stupid bet.
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I’ve only read ‘ Therese Raquin’ of all the books you name above, Dave, and that only because I was getting a bit in-depth with Zola for an essay I was writing on him; otherwise I’d probably never have read it, as the synopsis of it and the others put me off before I’d even opened the cover. I suppose a good example is Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’, of whom the author stated ‘I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.’ I came around to her when she learned what a pain she was, and as Mr Knightley was okay with her that was good enough for me – plus Mrs Elton outdoes Emma in every dislikeable way, along with her smug husband, and neither of them redeems themselves. I remember reading ‘Madame Bovary’ in the summer before I was to study it, and was confused because I didn’t like Emma Bovary (is it me and characters called Emma?) at all. She was the eponymous protagonist; surely I was supposed to like her? When I got onto the course – on Literary Realism – I realised that it was all about the absence of the author, who usually subtly manipulates readers to like or dislike as he/she wishes; hence it was up to readers to make up their own minds, and in my case it was a thumbs-down for Mme B. Elsewhere there’s Mrs Bennett, and Mr Collins, and Mr Dashwood’s family of his first marriage, not to mention Heathcliffe, and Jane Eyre’s a bit of a prig … there are just too many to go into here! For myself I recently created a highly-unlikeable character in ‘Fatal’ – but that’s enough about that. Many thanks for your weekly brain-teaser, Dave; have a good week. 🙂
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I think I’ve mentioned J.P. Dunleavy’s horrid main character in The Ginger Man. 🤢 The other unlikable main character that springs to mind is Luke Carr in Thomas Williams’s The Followed Man. The main character in Williams’s The Hair of Harold Roux was also unlikable. Both characters were sexist, misogynist pigs.
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Thank you for those excellent examples, Liz! Few characters are as unlikable as those who are sexist, misogynist pigs. (With apologies to actual pigs, who are wonderful animals.)
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Thank you so much, my dear author, When I opened Gone Girl, I could not stop smiling with the first phase: “When I think of my wife, I always think of the back of her head.” Thank you for it!
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Thank you, Ahmadou! That WAS quite a first line in “Gone Girl.” The Amy character had a brilliant but very disturbing brain inside that head.
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A very interesting subject, Dave, and many thanks! I can remember “Heart and Darknes” by Joseph Conrad in which through -Kurtz- we learn something about colonialisation in Africa! All the best:)
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Thank you, Martina! It’s been ages since I read “Heart of Darkness,” but it sounds like you’re saying it had significant unlikable characters. Any character who’s an attempted colonizer and/or in favor of colonialism is unlikable in my book.
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Yes Dave, you are right, of course! 🌻
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🙂
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Thank you to Resa for mentioning “Gone Girl” under a recent post!
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