Penfriend

[R]eaders want to be engaged even more than they want to be seduced. When purely affectionate and approving, a reader’s relationship to a character is flat. When positive feelings mix with censure and consternation, the relationship is dynamic. In fact, authorial elicitation of the reader’s frantic if impotent warning, “Oh, no, don’t do that!” is a powerful literary tool, for dismay generates energy and intensifiies engagement. In [We Need to Talk About]Kevin, I made Eva’s husband Franklin deliberately exasperating—see-no-evil, he refuses to recognize his son’s growing malice—because this “What a dupe! Wake up, buddy!” reaction is involving and oddly enjoyable.

[…] Were Eva Khatchadourian a devoted mother who adored her son from birth, there would be no book—and Lynne Ramsay would never have released her excellent adaptation of the novel this week as a feature film. Were Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina both faithful wives, we would never know their names.

Good stories require mistakes. If you want to read about unimpeachable characters, order the annual report from Oxfam. If you want to read about difficult, complicated, maddening characters who remind you of people you know—who remind you, if you’re honest, of yourself—read Shakespeare. Read Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Flaubert. Read Wilde, Updike, Roth, Yates, Wolfe, Woodward, McEwan, Hornby, Hollinghurst and Shriver.