Which characters in a book have stayed with you long after reading the book?

[MyBrilliantDisguise]

Are there any characters in books that you almost see as real people? Where you're almost wondering how they are now, or how they'd react to something? Have any made a huge impact on you and the way you live your life?

There are a few for me. Holden Caulfield. Anne Shirley. Fay and Tom in The Republic of Love (one of my favourite books.)

How about you?

Henry from The Secret History
Owen from Owen Meany
Scarlett from Gone With The Wind.

Kizzy from The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden

The family from Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Samuel Vimes from the Terry Pratchett books.

Tatty. Still with me today. Read over 10 years ago; not sure I've recovered yet!!

www.goodreads.com/book/show/395915.Tatty

Faythe Sanders. It was the first world I wanted to live in and she was the first character I wanted to be.

Jude in A Little Life - broke my heart...

Anne of Green Gables - snap.

Aslan from Narnia. I understood that he was a God and created a new religion aged 11 which involved praying to him and ceremonies with fruit/sweet sacrifices which I would eat after a short interval Not sure that's what CS Lewis had in mind.

Hazel from Watership Down. He's the ideal father figure to me.

Adam and Jenny from A Civil Contract and Sophy from The Grand Sophy. So much so that I'm attempting to write a fanfic novel including them all.

Anne Shirley.
Prentice and Ash from The Crow Road.

The eponymous Madame Bovary
Miss Haversham and Estelle from Great Expectations
Toby, Ren, Amanda, Jimmy, Oryx and Crake from Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy.
The Bennet family from Pride and Prejudice
The eponymous Emma, her father, Mr Knightley.

So many others. They are like friends and family to me.

So good to have some new book recommendations!

Another Sophie - titular character in Sophies world by Jostein Gaarder

Death in the Terry Prachett books.

Winnie the pooh. always!!

Christopher Pike - Sati

Read it when I was a young teen and have read it many times since, enjoy it even more now as an adult.

Jane Eyre. I worry about her happiness.

The Chinaman from Marguerite Duras’ ‘The lover’
Bert Baxter from the Adrian Mole series.
The family in the Helen Forester series about Liverpool.

Phillip Herriton in Where Angels Fear to Tread. I really thought he’d end up with Caroline and I like to think that at some point (in the fictional future) he told her how he really felt.

Scarlett and Rhett. Anne Shirley and Rilla. Julia and Charles from Brideshead Revisited. Dellarobia from Flight Behaviour. Rabbit and Janice from the John Updike books. Reta and Norah from Unless by Carol Shields. Arley from The Most Wanted by Jacquelyn Mitchard.

Calypso Grant in The Camomile Lawn.

Jude in A Little Life

Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited I totally relate to him

Cecilia and Robbie in atonement. I felt hollow after reading that

Scarlett O'Hara & Rhett Butler but also Melanie Hamilton. Her capacity to forgive, love and see good was quite a lesson.

Oh my goodness, Sati! I'd totally forgotten about it, I used to love that book as a teen.

Eliot Waugh from the book "King of Magicians"

I think Calypso appears in her other books as a side character.

Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair. She had such a sad life. - she tried so hard but it all fell away. I always wondered if she was sexually abused as a child (by the men her dad had hanging around). I really liked her until she had her child and was horrid to him.

MybrilliantDisguise I agree about Jane Eyre. Perhaps because she expects so little from life and has only ever met a very few terrible men she would be content.

Yes, SingingSands! Prentice and Ash from The Crow Road, definitely. Totally believable and you're really willing Prentice to wake up, and see how great Ash is.

Also Dan Weir from Espedair Street, again by Iain Banks. Deep down he's decent person who just isn't getting things right. I think a lot of people can identify with that.

I often find myself wondering what happened to Offred at the end of The Handmaid's Tale.

Joey Bettany / Maynard from the Chalet School books. I often imagine myself being invited to stay at her house as a guest!