Characters from books you HATE (that you're not supposed to!)

The main character in Liz Jensens War Crimes for the home. People said she was a refreshing narrative, bollocks. She was a nasty young girl during the war and an equally nasty old woman in a care home who should have really been in prison.

Fanny Price - ultimate killjoy!

Bridget Jones - irritatingly zany and clumsy.

Angel Clare - a victim blaming, hypocritical, bigot. Mind you I also thought Alec Durbeville was a sexy bastard which is probably very wrong Tess should have just murdrred the pair of them.

Yy to Jane Eyre. And Helen burn, weak minded fools. Agnes Grey. Fanny Price. All wallowing in their feeble minded victim complexes. Pretty much all the characters in any Eliot or hardy book, they're all twats.
I formed all those opinions at quite a young age. Reading again more deeply as an adult, I found even more reasons to hate them.

Yy to the adult Joey Bettany, massive ego complex. Just fuck off and get a life already. And the whole Swiss family Robinson.

You can't have Cathy and Heathcliffe, they weren't meant to be likeable in the book, it's only films and tv stuff that make them supposedly likeable. Edgar and his moron sister are pathetic though.

I don't like Jane Eyre or Lyra Belacqua. Or Elizabeth from Pride and Prejudice. I really liked Emma though. We did the book at school and my teacher went on about how awful she is. I think I felt sympathy for her always trying to do the right thing but getting it all wrong.

Frodo Baggins in LOTR I thought he was an arrogant shit who expected everyone to fall over themselves for him because he was wealthier than them. And seriously, it took him FIFTY YEARS to get around to sorting the ring out. Lazy bastard.????But then they cast (my teen idol at the time) Elijah Wood in the films and suddenly all was forgiven

Oh, don't get me wrong I love S&S, and as a portrait of a teenage girl, Marianne is spot on She's just one of those tedious 19th Century heroines who can't stand in the rain for five minutes without nearly dying (Jane Bennett is another but at least Marianne has a bit more gumption than that wet lettuce )

Just me being a bit Marianne-ish then - it's one of my favourite books. There is a brilliant passage where Marianne and Elinor have to withdraw with the ladies at some dinner party and the entire evening is spent trying to decide which of their sons, neither of whom are there, is the tallest for his age. You get the impression that Austen had sat through one too many of those discussions herself. Brilliantly funny.

Marianne was meant to be a drama queen (hence the title)

I know that. It doesn't make her any less annoying though

Marianne was meant to be a drama queen (hence the title). Lowering the tone but has anyone said Lola from Charlie and Lola? The way she treats Charlie is shocking.

Daisy in The Great Gatsby.

Kay Scarpetta from.the Patricia Cornwell novels. I know we're all meant to aspire to be like her. Super educated. Both fotensic pathologist and qualified lawyer. Highly successful in a male dominated field. Bags of integrity. Oh and let's not forget she's a fabulous cook. Oh and all women she works with either slavishly adore her, or they're dead jealous of her because she is so amazing. Oh and she's just do damned hot that in one of the later novels (when she's mid 50s, surely) she has some 26 years old adonis (Jay) lusting after after her.

Yeah right.

But actually she's a dour, sanctimonious prig with a sense of humour by pass. And she deludes herself that she has a very close, loving, mother-esque relationship with her niece Lucy. When she only sees her for one week a friggin year

Yeah right. Really close.

Marianne from Sense and Sensilbilty. An attention seeking drama queen.

And while we're on the subject, all the characters from Joanna Trollopes rehash of S&S. Just get a fucking job, this isn't the 1800's anymore.

Kitty Garstin in the Painted Veil
Honestly the film redeems her, but in the book...
And actually Walter Fane, I mean he has just fallen back in love with his wife, he dodged cholera all this time then seems to go and infect himself for the greater good....
Honestly the latest film does them both more favours than the book, where I just thought he should have infected her...
I am still reeling from this one

More Dickens for me, namely Little Nell and her grandfather. I was so glad when those fuckers died.

Isn't Mansfield Park a kind of pastiche and Fanny Price supposed to be an amusing "type" stemming from that? What do I know, I never managed to get through that one.

Lucie Manette in 'A Tale of Two Cities' - God I wanted to slap her! Just such a whiney, pathetic excuse for a woman!
Fanny Price in 'Mansfield Park' - she so needed to get a grip!

The girl in The Book Thief
Katniss Everdene
Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, Dumbledore, the Weasley twins and Mrs Weasley.

Bridget jones' daughter in Mad About The Boy. Irritating brat, she was meant to be school age so what was with the constant baby talk.

The Book Thief's narrator (the "Devil"?). Just couldn't get on with it at all, did not get very far. But loved the film version.

Mary Poppins is a different character in the books - they are a bit darker than the sweeter than sweet film. Well worth a read.

Carrie Bradshaw was also originally from a book but I still think she's annoying.

Consumption is tuberculosis and as there weren't any antibiotics to treat it people really had nothing else to do except lie around being delicate and hope for the best. There are photographs of patients lying in beds outside St Thomas' hospital in the 1940s (I think) because the 'fresh' air was the best thing for it. That's why people went to places like Austria and Switzerland - for the dryer, cleaner mountain air. Having said all that, The Robin was annoying s a character. So good and patient all the time.

Also agree with Lily Dale from the Barset books - annoying and won't consider ever looking at another man because someone broke her heart (or whatever it's a while since I read them!).

Also from my chick lit days any heroine in a Jane Greene novel.

I hated the characters in Us too, and Eat, Pray, Love's narrator was so smug and lacking in self-awareness (but she did remind me of someone I know who is a Buddhist so perhaps I'm just so unenlightened I can't appreciate them)

As for maybe in the 1930s people really did die from colds...) this made me laugh as I remember regularly lying on the couch, playing that we were dying of consumption. It seemed prevalent in the Little Women and Anne of Green Gables books. And the only treatment seemed to be lying on a sofa covered in a pretty delicate blanket until you were consumpted off (as we used to call it).

YonicScrewdriver - ha! whenever we have one of those "what's the worst book you've ever read" threads I usually name Man and Boy. What a dreadful tosser that man is.

Kay Scarpetta in Patricia Cornwell's crime series. She's supposed to be a strong, independent woman but, to me, she always seems to let herself be victimised and is really self-pitying.

Yy Yonic! I kept reading a new one after a period of years and forgetting how annoying he was!

I can save you the bother, hackmum. The protagonist is exactly the same shit in all of them.

There were years between my various readings and I kept forgetting how loathsome he was.

But wanderings the Robin spoke the prettiest French! How could you dislike that? And saved people's lives by singing to them. Are you jealous, do you think?

YY to the shopaholic girl, Maggie Bellever and Tess.

And Ron Weasley. What would Hermione ever see in him?