I’ll admit it: I don’t really believe in the distinction between sympathetic and unsympathetic characters. All fictional people (and perhaps all real people too, or almost all) are both unsympathetic and sympathetic in different ways and to varying extents.
One of my writer friends often points out that that the baddies in her novels are frequently more sympathetic than the goodies in mine. That makes sense, because I really don’t believe in flawless “good” people, especially since I’ve never been one or met any.
As a reader, I love books with characters that compel me to empathize even when it “should” be impossible. Indeed, I firmly believe that (although this is a slight oversimplification) unsympathetic characters create sympathetic readers and sympathetic humans.
Here are my top five novels containing unsympathetic protagonists.
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Morag Joss, Half-Broken Things
Michael, Jean, and Steph are all loners with no family or friends. Unexpected circumstances bring them all together in a large, beautiful house that Jean is looking after while its rich owners are away…and soon they have formed an unorthodox and highly irregular “chosen family” of sorts. They’re finally happy—each of them individually and all of them together. There’s a problem, however: the house’s owners are soon to return, which means that ‘home’ is about to disappear…
This brilliant, heartbreaking story is a literary novel as much as it’s genre crime, and I’ve never sympathized more with three protagonists who are, on the face of it, highly unsympathetic. Their ruthless, violent behavior is shocking, but their desperation to cling to the sanctuary they have finally found is so powerfully evoked that one cannot help feeling for them, even as they do terrible things.
A riveting read, in which the characters feel like true (albeit highly problematic) friends by the end.
Freida McFadden, The Housemaid
A down-on-her-luck and broke young woman with a big secret goes to work for a rich family in a huge, beautiful house that is packed with secrets. Within days, her boss starts to behave erratically and abusively…but what’s really going on, and who will be the ultimate victim?
This book, and movie, has taken the world by storm, and I absolutely love it. So gripping and unpredictable, by a storyteller who absolutely knows how to keep readers hooked.
The real genius of this story, however, is twofold: first, the mid-point twist is absolutely breathtaking, and I did not see it coming, and second, there’s a hugely satisfying element of the “worm turning” involved. I love it in fiction (and in life, actually) when someone who has been appallingly treated finally strikes back—and this novel is a perfect example of that genre.
Yes, the housemaid is an “unsympathetic” character in so many ways, but it’s certainly satisfying, from a watching revenge happen point of view, to see her do her thing!
Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince
Unsuccessful novelist Bradley Pearson is desperate to escape from his everyday life and retire to the country to write his career-saving masterpiece. Meanwhile, other people in his life have different thoughts about how he should spend his time, and before long, Bradley finds himself embroiled in a baffling murder mystery in which it’s hard to tell if he’s the murderer, the victim or both….
Bradley Pearson is such a wonderful “unsympathetic” protagonist. He’s passionate, selfish, neurotic and slightly oblivious to the suffering of others—but to readers he’s also incredibly reassuring, because he shows us that we’re not alone in being occasionally a little crazy and delusional.
And the characters surrounding Bradley are often unbelievably annoying, immoral and awful, which further reassures us that sometimes, when we put ourselves first, it’s justified on the grounds of the competition being wholly unprepossessing.
No one is better than Murdoch at describing the vanity and absurdity of human beings, and this novel is as hilariously witty as it is puzzling and dark.
Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile
Linnet Ridgeway is murdered while on her honeymoon with her new husband, Simon Doyle. The prime suspect is Jacqueline de Bellefort, Simon’s jilted ex and Linnet’s former best friend. Jacqueline is ostentatiously unforgiving of her former friend and former fiancé who jointly betrayed her, and certainly has a humdinger of a motive…but she cannot have committed the murder, because she was under supervision the entire time during which it could have been committed….
Agatha Christie excelled at many things, but one of them was: the unsympathetic protagonist who is also a murder victim. Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None are the two most obvious examples of this from Dame Agatha’s oeuvre, but Death on the Nile is the one where the awfulness of the person who’s been killed works most effectively.
I loathed Linnet Ridgeway (imagine stealing your best friend’s fiancé?!) and even disapproving of murder as I do, I nevertheless found it extremely satisfying that she got her comeuppance. One of the most memorable bits of the novel is the scene where Poirot points out to Linnet that she behaved despicably, and why there is no justification for what she did. The plot here is one of Dame Agatha’s best, with all her unique ingenuity on display.
Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener
Bartleby is a clerk in an ordinary office who at first does everything he’s asked to do by his boss. Then one day, given a perfectly routine task, he says, “I would prefer not to.” And from that point onward, he says that no matter what jobs his boss assigns to him….
This is an all-time literary classic that’s one of my very favorite novels. Bartleby, while being objectively unsympathetic (who, after all, wants an employee who refuses to do any work at all?) is in fact extremely easy to identify with, particularly for readers who have jobs that they don’t love.
And Bartleby is also mysterious, for we never learn why he would prefer not to, or what he would rather do instead. He is also unhelpable, though his boss, the book’s narrator, tries his best. An irresistible riddle of a novel that is absolute perfection, satisfying even as it refuses to offer the reader any easy answers.
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