CHARACTERS I WOULD LIKE TO MEET

                                               

Sometimes when I finish a book, I don’t want it to end so I continue on with the story in my mind. The setting and the characters have become so real to me it’s as if they exist in a real place as real people and not in just the writer’s or reader’s imagination. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t lots of books I still enjoy and would give 5 stars to on Amazon even though I don’t quite feel the characters are alive somewhere. I may like the characters a lot and want to read more about them, but it’s not as if I magically want to visit with them. I think this feeling happens mostly with series when the reader becomes better acquainted with a character as the character grows.

But that’s not always the case. I would love to meet Atticus Finch, Scout and Jem. I’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird three times and love these characters. I want to be a neighbor of Atticus Finch for a short while and sit on his front porch on a summer evening drinking iced tea or lemonade listening to him. Occasionally, Atticus would turn to me and say, “What do you think, Ms. Alden?”

Not exactly how I picture Lord Peter Wimsey but close 

And then there’s Lord Peter Wimsey. Oh, how I love him. I like Harriet Vane, too, but it’s Wimsey, a mixture of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, who Dorothy L. Sayers created that delights me. What fun it would be to talk with him, although I would be listening and laughing more than talking.

Jane Langton

Jane Langton’s Homer Kelly is another character I’d dearly love to meet. Maybe I could sit in one of his transcendental classes on Thoreau and Emerson at Harvard.  But even more I’d like to follow him about quietly listening as he investigates, although I don’t know how silent I could be. I’m sure I’d be snorting trying to hold in my laughter as I listened to him.

Then there’s Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series. The original Sherlock Holmes didn’t appeal as much as King’s Sherlock Holmes.  Hers is a much more rounded character and to me is far more realistic and actually lives – or did live in the past.

I met Louise Penny at Malice when her first book, Still Life came out. I sat at a table with her husband during Malice Go Round. She told us that her husband is her model for Armand Gamache so although her husband is not exactly how I picture Gamache, I can see the love between them is like that of  Gamache and Reine Marie. Armand Gamache, Three Pines and all the characters living there are real to me. I asked a friend my question the other day of what character would she'd like to meet if he/she were real. She immediately said, “Armand Gamache.” Several years ago my siblings, a brother-in-law and I took a trip to Quebec. We stayed for a while in Montreal, camped in a large provincial park and spent a few days in Quebec City. On the trip, with the exception of my brother, who had never read Louise Penny, the rest of us would comment on sights we were seeing that related to her books, and even more so, we all said we wanted to find Three Pines and stay there visiting with the characters who live there. It didn’t matter that Three Pines doesn’t exist. It did in all five of our minds. We wanted to vacation there. When I introduced Still Life to my book club several years ago, after we discussed the book, I told them I’d arranged for a bus to take us to Three Pines and asked what characters would they most like to meet there. It created a lively discussion, and some people actually believed I planned a trip to Three Pines. They believed it was a real place, and I’m not sure they’d not come to believe these characters lived, too.

Louise Penny with actor playing the part of Armand Gamache

I think the characters in the books of my fellow bloggers series writers are well-rounded and come alive for me while I’m reading their books; I’d like to meet Carla Damron’s Caleb Knowles, KM Rockwood’s Jesse Damon, and Linda Rodrigueze’s Skeet Banyon.  Warren Bull’s characters in his young adult book, Heartland were well done, too. As for James Jackson’s Seamus McCree? I’ve met him. He’s Jim. I met him at Malice and he’s become a friend through blogging together. He denies that he’s Seamus. He says Seamus has more hair, is younger, taller, faster, stronger, smarter, and better looking. I disagree with some of what he says; he may not be out risking his life solving crimes, but I think he’s just as smart and looks are relative so to me Seamus is still Jim.

What characters would you like to meet?