I am not a violent person. But all the same...
I mentioned a post or two ago that Meg Harper and I were chatting at Greenbelt, festival of faith, arts, justice, ecology, and - this year - enough mud for a Worldwide Fellowship of Hippopotami. And their grannies. As we drank tea, ate yummy cake, and felt our wellies squelch further into the depths we talked about books. I don't know why Tess of the D'Urbervilles came up, but it did, and I remarked that I could merrily slap Angel Clare.
(If you haven't read it, I won't tell you why I want to slap him, because I don't want to give any spoilers. But I defy you to read it without wanting to turn the idiot upside down and shake him. Yes - Angel is a man. You don't often find anything angelic in Thomas Hardy.)
Meg agreed instantly and vehemently, and the conversation turned to 'Slappable Characters in Books'. Was it Meg, or somebody else since, who nominated Mr Rochester? Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park, anybody? In children's books, Eustace Scrubb (Narnia) is eminently slappable until he has a life-changing experience. More recently, the father - I forget the spineless toad's name - in 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter'.
Any ideas?
3 comments:
He might not be so annoying as I remember him being, but Glew in Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles always got on my nerves. He kept taking the adventure quotient down by complaining and being petty at dramatic moments.
...And I just remembered: he also nearly burns everyone alive in the last book of the series because he HAD to go sit on the magical throne that no one was supposed to sit on.
There's always one, isn't there?
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