The Nature of Things

My rating: 3 of 5 stars There has been a lot of buzz in literary circles recently about whether fiction must, or should always, have likable characters. It's a valid question, I suppose, at least for some readers. I know one who swears he won't read a novel unless there's a character in it that he can like and sympathize with. He gave up on Jonathan Franzen for that reason. It's interesting that the current discussion seems to always involve the work of female writers. I don't see any critics asking the aforementioned Jonathan Franzen why he doesn't have more likable characters in his work. It's quite likely that there is an element of sexism in the question, as there seems to be an element of sexism in the assessment of most human endeavors in this country. Women are trained from the womb to be "likable" and so we expect women writers to create likable characters. The lack of a likable character, though, does not seem to have held Gillian Flynn...