I really dislike Mrs Weasley.

[cockneysalad]

She is an awful character, she seems to prefer Harry to Ron and is mean to Fleur. She is also a bit of a stereotype, the apron, the knitting, the homemaker etc. Which literary characters annoy you and why?

Oh, yes, Dean is worse than Emily! Really, truly creepy.

@NoWebbedFeet - yep, Teddy is short on the personality stakes!

I wish she'd written it with Isle and Perry as the main characters.

But I think Emily's dad can be defended. He's living at a time when clearly, the medicine isn't all that, and he must have been hoping he had more time. I don't know how you would tell a child that sort of news.

Gandalf in LOTR. Why didn't he just get one of the eagles to take whimpy Frodo to Mt. Doom in Mordor ? I t would have saved the characters ( and us ) a lot of grief. Ditto the dwarves in The Hobbit.
Inspector Lynley's dreary wife in the TV series. She was much livelier in the books. Ditto Tom Barnaby's wife, Joyce, in Midsummer Murders.

Dean is a creepy manipulative bastard. I hate hate hate him. Teddy might be minus personality but Dean seems to believe he has a right to control Emily completely. I forgive not-quite grown up Emily a lot because she's being abused.

The Cazalets - I like Polly and definitely like Clary. And miss Millament, and Rachel's lover syd. The rest are mostly unpleasant.

But I think Emily's dad can be defended. He's living at a time when clearly, the medicine isn't all that, and he must have been hoping he had more time. I don't know how you would tell a child that sort of news.

Nor do I, but it's more that LMM clearly intends us to approve of his decision as poetic. It's not just that he doesn't tell her (which is what allows the insensitive servant to tell her brutally and frighteningly, after the doctor has said that Douglas has only a day or two more to live), it's that he says he's too proud to have made contact with his dead wife's family (who will have to take on a penniless Emily) even when he knew he was dying. That's what sets up the genuinely brutal scene where Emily has a bunch of total strangers reluctantly drawing lots for her just after her father's funeral.

I think a lot of LMM's parents are pretty dubious, though she often evidently intends us to admire them -- there's the estranged father Andrew Stuart in Jane of Lantern Hill who sends for an eleven year old he's not met since babyhood, promptly buys a house with her, and has her bustling around in a pinny after him while he writes.

Not to mention Jane's weak, beautiful mother who allows her despotic mother to bully and oppress a small child to the point where she's afraid to express affection towards her own child in public, or to ask to be 'allowed' to stay at home with Jane when she's ill. Obviously, she's a portrait of an abused woman (her elderly mother treats her like a living doll and chooses all her clothes and directs her social life), but there's no sense in the novel that she might also require forgiveness for not acting to protect her child.

I haven't read Emily since I was young and don't dare read it as an adult. Do agree that Dean was very creepy.

If anyone fancies reviving their memories of the Emily books, they (and lots of the Anne books and some others) are available for free on fadedpage.com,

As are almost all Dorothy L Sayers's books, too -- as someone was (rightly) complaining about Peter Wimsey earlier on the thread. I'm reading the (brilliant) Murder Must Advertise for the first time in years, but getting annoyed by Peter turning the head of a jaded aristocratic cokehead by diving from a fountain into a shallow basin wearing fancy dress.

Yes that's true TheExterminatingAngel and EHopes Clary Cazalet was good, and Polly as well. Ok I'll accept those two!

He has two weeks to live. But yes, I do think his 'pride' has a lot to answer for there. I think we judge more harshly than we might because we've forgotten that sort of society, where people genuinely did dispose of children in that way. There's the bit in the Anne books where one of the abused wives who get very little sympathy - I think it's Mrs Thomas? - is said to have 'broken up housekeeping' and divided her children amongst her relatives.

LMM obviously has a father complex of her own. But then she's so successful with Matthew, who is just lovely as a father figure.

Oh - and with Sayers, I never understood why we were supposed to find the Dowager Duchess so enchanting. Is she? She always seems like a total non-character to me.

Dean creeped me out completely. How very pederast of him.

@FlurryKnox and @SarahAndQuack, I'm the one who doesn't like Lord Peter Wimsey! Bunter is an anaemic version of Jeeves. Harriet Vane deserved much better than Wimsey.

Sayers wrote quite a few stories featuring a commercial traveller called Montague Egg. I like those. Egg is a far more appealing character.

Oh I think Katniss is an amazing character. I love the deliberate parallels with Theseus. She is the typical male character of legends where the mission is paramount and the love interests are secondary at best. I don’t think she’s likeable in the least, and she is even terrible at trying to be likeable for strategic reasons - such a subversion of the typical heroine.

I only read Emily as an adult and found it really disappointing after the humour of the early Anne books. Dean, so creepy. Emily, so priggish.

I like Mrs Weasley. She over compensates to Harry because she is sorry for him; I think she shows Harry a warm family life but she only puts him above Ron in the same way we always put guests above family - not because we love the guests more. I always think it’s interesting when fanfics pair Harry with someone other than Ginny - to me it’s obvious she is everything he is looking for after his childhood, and the same for Hermione with Ron.

Not a book, but have just re watched Downton Abbey and the kitchen girl Daisy has given me the rage. Completely nasty to people because of her own insecurities and never listens.

Daisy annoyed my in Downton too. Just wanted to please everyone which I'm was her job. But that whole saga of her FiL and stuff was just a bit too much

Do you really think Lucious Malfoy would let his son stay in a depressing, moldy, damp dungeon that was not charmed lol

Umm do you know what most Public Schools used to be like? I read a lot of the first set of Ofsted reports, and a lot of boarding schools were not even meeting the legal minimum standards. They had to upgrade facilities fast.

My recent character pet hate is Holly Gibney from the Stephen King novels - she’s just so irritatingly brave and vulnerable and quirky. Also she uses words like “poopy”

Also I find it a bit annoying that for SK being female and overweight seems to equal being greedy, clingy and neurotic (or psychotic in the case of Annie Wilkes).

Daisy in the Great Gatsby is awful!

Ooh here goes.
Skimmed through the cursed child and Harry's kid Albus seems like a right brat. Understandable that he's got issues but really, couldn't see anything likeable about the kid at all, he's actively annoying throughout. I also really disliked Ron, think he's a realistic character but not a fan of the way he treats other characters and projects his issues onto them. As for Mrs Weasley, I think she does venture into being a bit of a motherhood cliche but I still like her, and always seemed to me that she was just overcompensating with Harry to give him the kind of maternal figure he never had.

Also Meg March. Amy was irritating too but at least she was ambitious, spirited etc. Meg just seemed like a discontented whiner with minimal personality or likeability