Friday, August 11th, 2023

How close is too close?

Dear Gentle Readers,

here’s the problem I’ve been thinking about in my own novel-in-progress this week. It’s about enigmatic, brilliant, quietly strong, secretly wounded and self-defeating protagonists—a stereotypical character type I’m often drawn to. One of my characters is this sort of character, whose stereotypical traits I see in characters like Sherlock Holmes; in the humble printer’s devil Theo after trauma turns him into the bloodthirsty, haunted Colonel Kestrel in The Kestrel, the second of Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark series; in Patrick Melrose in the eponymous series by Edward St. Aubyn. Long John Silver, the ambiguous villain of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, is another in this mold. They are characters who speak little, feel much, who are sick or drunk or despairing alone, never in company, and who show moments of touching kindness or weakness that offer glimpses of a hidden sensitivity.