Likable

I was at dinner a few weeks back with some friends who had read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  I was the only one of the four who hadn't.  One of the three loved it, one was in the middle, and the other thought the characters were "unlikable."  The last comment begs the question: do main characters need to be likable for a book to be enjoyed or considered a good read?

Given the group's mixed reaction, I wasn't sure if I wanted to read it until I saw the movie trailer with Ben Affleck.  Then I was in.  It sounded like a complicated story.  A couple's life is falling apart along with their marriage.  They lose their jobs, their money, and move from New York City to North Carthage, Missouri.  On the stress tests, they would rate pretty high.  Both behave badly during this time.  One day, the wife is missing.  Where is Amy?  Did Nick kill her?

Back to the question.  Do books need likable characters to be good?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: No, but I think my third friend raises an interesting perspective.

Books need unlikable characters sometimes.  Where would Jean Valjean be without his Javert?  Where would Clarice be without her Hannibal Lecter?

The first book I think of that I loved with a very unlikable main character was Fatal Vison by Joe McGinniss.  McGinniss followed Jeffrey MacDonald, a physcian who stabbed his wife and kids to death and made it look like someone broke into his house.  MacDonald suffered stab wounds, but none of them were fatal.  Sometimes good books have a villain as a main character.

Those are the evil characters, but what about the complex and the flawed?  Maria Semple's Bernadette is flawed, as is Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy.  I think they are wonderful, but are they likable?  While I enjoyed reading about them, I am not sure I'd want to be their friends, but that isn't the point.  What is likable in a live person is very different than what is likable in a book character.  Perfect and nice people in books are boring, and boring people aren't interesting unless they are being tortured or experiencing some disaster.  Charlotte Lucas from Pride and Prejudice is nice, practical, and dull as toast.  When she marries Mr. Collins, the Bennet's obsequious distant cousin, her life gets interesting, and not in a good way.

In Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn creates characters who hover between flawed and evil.  Clearly, all flawed people are not evil (see Bernadette and Mr. Darcy).  But are evil people flawed or just evil?  That depends.  In Perfume by Patrick Suskind, a man craves what he lacks, and goes to extraordinary means to get it.  Is he evil for wanting to be whole?  No.  Is he evil for taking what he wants from other people?  Yes.  Therein lies the complexity.

While I enjoyed Gone Girl, I could understand why some people would not.  Every reader has their own threshold for reading about people who self-destruct or make bad choices.  This is a psychological thriller, which means at least one of the characters is going to be psycho, and not everyone wants to read about people operate by their own rules.  I can see how these characters could push that threshold for some readers to where they wouldn't want to read it.