Two Books About Lovable Unlikable People

Dear readers,

Some time ago I found a crown-of-thorns plant (Euphorbia milii) by the trash bins in our building. The plant had once been glorious but was abandoned in critical condition, with sap-oozing wounds and wizened limbs. I rehomed it and performed triage. The plant responded by perking and expanding at a “Little Shop of Horrors” rate, expressing tentacles that pricked all passersby, including me, with those murderous titular thorns. Euphorbia milii is a plant that can be loved but never liked.

Books are full of characters with the same quality. (As is life.) Below, some irresistible figures with whom you’d never, ever want to grab a beer.

—Molly

“Lucy,” by Jamaica Kincaid

Fiction, 1990

This short novel is a study of several types of defiance: daughters defying mothers, employees defying employers, children defying logic. Lucy Josephine Potter arrives in Manhattan at age 19 from the West Indies to work as an au pair for a wealthy couple and their four kids. The beam of her intelligence is in the range of 200,000 lumens; in a matter of weeks she has taken the measure of the unhappily married couple, captivated their children and mapped out exactly how entangled in this family she wishes to become. (Not very.)