Our Favourite Characters
To tie-in with Cathy Forde's 2nd Creative Writing Task, focusing on Characters, some of us have chosen our favourite fictional characters, along with reasons for our choices. As always, we'd love you to add your picks using the comments button below!
Chris Guthrie from Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Chris is a powerful, intelligent woman who faces several personal tragedies in her life. She overcomes her difficulties by breaking out of the normal restrictions of society and successfully taking control of her life and her money against the advice of people deemed to be her "elders and betters". I admire this approach to life. - Jeanette
Amber from Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor.
Amber is a social-climber so wicked, scheming and decadent that you should hate her unreservedly but her spirit and determination made her the first baddie I've admired and somehow had me rooting for her to succeed. As a favourite character, she's a bit of a guilty pleasure! - Francesca
Robert Caligari from The Boy Who Kicked Pigs by Tom Baker
What is not to love? Robert is a thoroughly unpleasant child who has a penchant for kicking pigs. Deliciously nasty, vindictive and spiteful - a wonderful villain who causes mass mayhem before coming to a gruesome and welcome end. Robert is beautifully drawn by David Roberts, who truly captures his blackened soul. - Chris
Anne from Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
She speaks her mind, stands out from the crowd in every way possible and lives in the world of her own imagination - not to mention captures the heart of cheeky Gilbert Blythe! "Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive - it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there?" - Julia and Clare
Arthur Bryant from the Bryant and May books by Christopher Fowler
Arthur is my favourite character at the moment. Along with his partner John May, Arthur Bryant runs the PCU, the Peculiar Crimes Unit, a highly unorthodox branch of the London Police force, charged with investigating cases that could cause public unrest. In effect this means they deal with the weird, wonderful and downright inexplicable. Arthur Bryant is a maverick, to say the least. He approaches crime solving by referring to his vast and esoteric knowledge of the unseen aspects of London, frequently calls on a local witch for advice and, in my head at least, most resembles an irascible, pipe-smoking, shabbier version of Paddington Bear. And yet, here is a character who has a strong moral compass, cares deeply about the people and the city around him, and who, in his own particular way, is utterly loyal to his ragbag collection of colleagues and friends, everyone of them a misfit in their own right. A real treat! - Philippa
Emma Woodhouse from Emma by Jane Austen
The character I know best is Emma Woodhouse, created by Jane Austen in 1815. I can't believe that Emma is nearly 200 years old, as to me she is still the fresh-faced foolish young girl that Austen depicted, devoted to her father, giving her friends lifestyle advice, matchmaking, scheming, making awful decisions and creating a terrible mess. I know Emma so well because I have come across her in so many incarnations, through the original novel, through various film adaptations, through audio books and now she is even on our television sets in a current BBC screenplay. But apart from knowing Emma, the fictional character, so well, I have also known a number of real life ‘Emmas', however I have to say that they have been more along the lines of Alicia Silverstone's character 'Cher' from Clueless (also based on Austen's Emma), than our somewhat more refined Georgian matchmaker. - Caroline
Le Petit Prince from the book of the same title by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
The little prince is a delightful character from my favourite children's book in French. He is particularly close to my heart because Le Petit Prince was my "First Prize for French" in year one of secondary school. - Jeanette
Anne Elliot from Persuasion by Jane Austen
Anne Elliot knows what it is to be ignored and taken for granted but she is still present and vital, still watching and quietly commenting on everything that happens around her. Her resilience and faithfulness never fails to move me. Every time I read Persuasion I wonder what will happen; will Captain Wentworth overlook Anne, will the pretty wilfulness of the Musgrove girls distract him, will he put duty before love? Ultimately, despite the fact that he has the power of life and death over the men under his command, he is undone by his feelings for 'a mere woman'. Persuasion always gives me hope and always reminds me that, no matter what might happen in our lives, we are all human. Pride and Prejduice might be the most glamorous of Jane Austen's novels but Persuasion is the must humane and, to my mind, realistic.
Favourite character
One of my favourite characters is Sarah from 'I, Divine' by Rabih Alameddine. She is the quintessential heroine: brave, flawed, full of high drama, intelligent, though sometimes obtuse, but basically a good person who, like many of us, is on a quest to find out what she is, who she is, and where she fits in to life.
She tells her story over and over in a novel of first chapters, unrelenting, picking up pieces here and there, each time circling closer to the truth of what her life is and has been. The final lines, her epiphany so to speak, never fail to make me cry.