And yet, more often than we might admit, they are the ones who linger. I can think of so many books that are true of this, and we always reach for them.
We are often told that fiction is about connection. That we read to see ourselves, to recognise something familiar, to feel less alone in the oddness of being human. But what happens when the characters refuse that invitation? When they are too sharp, too self-involved, too evasive, too proud, too careless or too morally uncertain to sit comfortably beside us?
Perhaps we need to stop asking whether characters are likeable, and start asking whether they are believable.
Because likeability is a slippery little thing. It often says as much about the reader as it does about the character. A protagonist who appears aloof to one reader might seem wounded to another. A character who seems selfish might also be surviving. Someone who frustrates us might be doing so precisely because they are behaving in a way we recognise, even if we would rather not.
That, I think, is where unlikeable characters become interesting. Not when they are difficult for the sake of it, but when their flaws reveal something true.
The pull of difficult protagonists
Take Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. I just read this and had the same reaction as many people. Some of the characters (not all) are hard to like. They can feel emotionally evasive, self-interested and difficult to fully trust. Their choices are not always generous, and their relationships often seem shaped by avoidance, nostalgia, self-protection and the murky pull of the past.
And yet, this is part of what makes the novel compelling.
The reader is not being asked to admire them. We are being asked to sit with the messiness of who they are. There is a difference. Admiration tends to smooth things over. Messiness asks us to pay closer attention.
This may also help explain why a novel with unlikeable characters can still be received so positively. Readers do not always want moral neatness. Sometimes we want texture. We want contradiction. We want to see people behaving badly in ways that feel psychologically precise rather than simply dramatic.
A character does not need to be pleasant company to be good fictional company. In fact, some of the most memorable characters are the ones we would probably avoid in real life. Reading gives us the privilege of proximity without consequence. We can observe the damage, the vanity, the delusion, the silence, the need, without having to personally deal with the fallout over coffee.
Which is perhaps why difficult characters continue to fascinate us.
When flaws become the point
Unlikeable characters work best when their flaws are specific. It is not enough for a character to be vaguely “difficult” or broadly “morally grey”. That can quickly become a label rather than a fully realised personality.
The most compelling unlikeable characters tend to have a recognisable emotional logic. They behave badly, but not randomly. Their choices may be frustrating, even cruel, but we can trace their shape.
We see this across contemporary fiction:
- Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke gives us characters whose unlikeability comes through emotional evasiveness, self-interest and a certain inability, or unwillingness, to be fully honest with themselves and others. Their relationships are shaped by nostalgia and self-protection, which makes them difficult to trust but hard to dismiss. The discomfort comes from how recognisable their avoidance feels, which makes this book so good.
- My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh centres a narrator who is privileged, cold, dismissive and deliberately detached from the world around her. She treats other people, particularly her friend Reva, with casual cruelty. Yet her withdrawal is also rooted in grief, depression and a desire to disappear from consciousness itself. The novel asks whether numbness is a failure of character, a symptom of pain, or both.
- Yellowface by R. F. Kuang follows June Hayward, whose ambition curdles into theft, self-justification and moral cowardice. She steals another writer’s manuscript and spends much of the novel trying to convince herself that she has somehow earned the success that follows. I had issues with this book, and didn't love it as much as everyone. What makes June so uncomfortable to read is not that she lacks awareness entirely, but that she keeps bending awareness into an excuse.
- Normal People by Sally Rooney gives us Connell and Marianne, who are not unlikeable in an obvious or theatrical sense, but whose emotional avoidance can be deeply frustrating. They hurt each other through silence, insecurity, pride and the repeated inability to say plainly what they feel. Their flaws are quieter than June’s or Moshfegh’s narrators’, but no less painful to witness.
- The Guest by Emma Cline gives us Alex, a protagonist whose charm is inseparable from manipulation. She drifts through other people’s lives, taking what she can, often without much regard for the damage she leaves behind. Her unlikeability comes from the way she turns survival into performance, making the reader both wary of her and strangely invested in her next move.
In each case, likeability is not the point. Complexity is.
These characters unsettle us because they are not written to win approval. They are written to reveal something: about shame, ambition, grief, emotional self-protection, privilege, loneliness, insecurity, or the little lies people tell themselves in order to keep going.
Why readers keep turning the pages
There is something quietly freeing about letting go of the need to like a character. It shifts the reading experience. We are no longer asking, “Would I be friends with this person?” which is, frankly, a bizarre standard to apply to fiction, though we have all probably done it. Instead, we begin asking better questions.
What does this character want?
What are they refusing to admit?
Who do they hurt when they are trying to protect themselves?
What does their behaviour expose about the world around them?
Unlikeable characters often force us to read more actively. They do not hand us the comfort of easy identification. We have to examine them, question them, resist them, sometimes even recognise ourselves in them against our better judgment.
They allow us to:
- Sit with discomfort rather than rush towards moral resolution
- Notice how people justify selfish, cowardly or careless behaviour
- Explore the difference between understanding someone and excusing them
- Recognise less flattering parts of human nature without pretending they are rare
- Think more critically about empathy, judgment, and consequence
That distinction between understanding and excusing matters. A good novel does not need us to approve of every character. It simply asks us to pay attention. Understanding why someone behaves badly does not make the behaviour harmless. But it can make the story richer, more unsettling, and more human.
The myth of the likeable character
The demand for likeable characters can sometimes flatten the conversation around books. It suggests that fiction should behave itself. That protagonists should be good hosts. That they should welcome us in, offer us something warm, and avoid making the evening awkward.
But some of the best fiction is awkward.
It lets people be vain, bitter, lonely, deluded, passive, ambitious, jealous or afraid. It lets them say the thing they should have swallowed. It lets them make the same mistake twice. It lets them know better and fail anyway.
This is not to say every unlikeable character is automatically interesting. Some are thinly written. Some feel designed purely to shock. Some seem to mistake cruelty for depth. But when done well, unlikeability can become a kind of narrative pressure. It presses on the reader’s expectations. It asks why we want goodness from fictional people when real people are so rarely consistent.
Perhaps the issue is not that readers dislike unlikeable characters. Perhaps the issue is that we dislike characters whose flaws feel unearned, unexplored or lazily drawn.
Give us a character who behaves badly for reasons we can feel, even if we cannot forgive them, and the whole thing changes.
A different kind of connection
Connection in fiction is not always about warmth. Sometimes it is about recognition. Not the comforting kind, where we see our best selves reflected back, but the pricklier kind. The kind that catches.
A character can be selfish and still be lonely. Cruel and still wounded. Passive and still desperate. Charming and still dangerous. Loving and still incapable of behaving well.
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