The other day, I posted on my blog about the fact that some of Amazon readers complain that the characters in my book are "unlikeable."

As I said there, my favorite literary characters are the ones who aren’t traditionally likable - like Humbert Humbert in “Lolita,” or Holden Caulfield in “Catcher in the Rye,” or the selfish Holly Golightly in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s, or the repulsive Ignatius Reilly of “Confederacy of Dunces.” These are the characters that stick with me decades after I read the books: Characters that I might have found repellent or horrifying or annoying, but were always always interesting.

I'm curious whether people agree with me about this, and if so, what constitutes an "unlikeable character"?

I don't mind "unlikeable," particularly if you can understand the character's motivations. Don't we always talk about movie and tv characters that we "love to hate?" Same thing should hold true for books.

I'm with you 100%. That said, there's also the line between "likeably unlikeable" and plain old unpleasant. For example - I had a hard time enjoying Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep because I found the main character in it both dour and somewhat bland. If a character is unlikeable, I'd like them to also be vibrant, to pop off the page in a memorable way.