Character Connection

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett takes place in the 12th century. Times were tough. One bad summer could wipe out a crop, causing many people to starve. Medicine was for all practical purposes non-existent. Anyone different or new was greeted with deep suspicion. England was on the brink of a civil war. Yet in all this, we meet Tom Builder. He's a dreamer. He's also quietly brilliant. In the first few pages of his story, he loses his job, gets attacked by bandits, and loses his wife as she gives birth to their son. Yet he dreams on. He accepts people for what they are. When he meets Ellen, a woman whom others see as a witch, he eventually accepts her help. When her bastard son shows a genius for architecture, Tom teaches him. The cathedral of his dreams is a thing of beauty. He feels that when you are worshiping the Creator of all Heaven and Earth, you should do so in an airy place filled with light and beauty. Convention holds that cathedrals can't be built that way because they'll fall down. Tom knows they can. As other people tell him that he can't build the cathedral that he dreams of, he goes about showing them that he can. Other men might stand back and watch as others do all the manual labor. Tom is out there working harder than anyone. I can't remember if he actually helps quarry the stone, but he definitely helps dig foundations and lay block and whatever other dirty work goes into building. He also supervises the men, who are mostly untrained, and I remember him as being fair and patient. He does have a blind side when it comes to his oldest jerk of a son, but nobody's perfect.…

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday.Miss Alexia Tarabotti is the main character in Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series, beginning with Soulless. Miss Alexia (it feels disrespectful to leave off the Miss) is, to quote from my review, "a fantastic character. At twenty-six, she's firmly on the shelf in Victorian society, but she's okay with that. Better to be on the shelf than married to some half-wit who can't keep up with her own intellect and curiosity. She gets enough of that from her family. They don't know she's soulless and put all of her quirks down to the fact that her father was Italian. But they've left her just a little insecure about her appearance and desirability. Just enough to make her feel real." She meets her match in sexy Lord Maccon, who just happens to be an Alpha werewolf. You would think that a non-werewolf female would be cowed by a true Alpha personality, but not Miss Alexia. She is more than…

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday.Anna Karenina. The book by Tolstoy is larger than most. The character of the same name is larger than life. There have been very few characters that I've read about that have left me as conflicted as Anna. I admired her for going after what she wanted while I looked down on her at the same time for exactly the same reasons. I think my problem was that she was actually married to an okay guy. Sure, it was an arranged marriage, but he treated her and their son well and he worked hard. I'm sure that Anna had it good compared to a lot of women in arranged marriages. But when she meets the dashing Vronsky, she decides that she wants love and passion at any cost. She throws her reputation to the wind and goes for it. And that's where my double standard came in. One part of me wondered why Anna just couldn't accept "good…

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday.My almost-total immersion in George R. R. Martin's world of A Song of Ice and Fire (I'm watching Game of Thrones and reading A Storm of Swords) has me thinking a lot about Tyrion Lannister. I've already written about him though, so I'll move on to another misshapen character I love. Matthew Shardlake from the series by C. J. Sansom. Matthew Shardlake is a hunchbacked lawyer who has gotten tangled up in the very, very, very edges of the Henry VIII drama. Who doesn't love reading about Tudor times, even if it's not really about the Tudors themselves? Matthew Shardlake is a great lawyer with a good heart and a strong sense of right and wrong. As is true in fiction as well as in real life, no one sees past his crooked exterior to see the man inside. He tends to be glum and introspective. He doesn't generally feel sorry for himself, but he does have his…

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday.I love the Anne of Green Gables series. Anne and Diana are my dear friends, but the entire series is chock full of characters I love. One of those is Leslie Moore from Anne's House of Dreams. Leslie is a beautiful, haunted woman. I believe Anne first notices her when she's first arriving at her "house of dreams" as a newlywed. Leslie is standing by the side of the road and gives her such a look of resentment that Anne feels it keenly. This is a woman she doesn't even know! Later, they become friends and Leslie explains that she had been having a bad day and Anne's obvious happiness had just rubbed her the wrong way. And then we learn her story. I can't remember what was going on with her early family life, but it was very unhappy and she eventually ends up married to a world-class jerk, pretty much against her will. I don't think…

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday.I keep thinking about Ivy Rowe, from Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith, and I keep deciding not to write about her. I love her too much.  The book is one of my all-time favorites because of Ivy herself.  I will never capture her in a blog post when Lee Smith gave us a whole book of a gloriously eager, flawed, human character. Ivy feels like family. But it's time for me to try. Ivy. I think her name and I see a beautiful red-headed young woman reaching out with both arms and grasping life. She grabs so much life that she leaps off the page and into my heart. She has come to embody the earlier, unknown generations of women in my family to me. Ivy is an Appalachian mountain girl. The Appalachians (which I call home) might not be a very wild or remote chain, but progress was still late coming to them. Girls growing…