How to like reading about a hero you don’t like – ‘The Goodbye Kiss’ by Massimo Carlotto

How to like reading about a hero you don’t like – ‘The Goodbye Kiss’ by Massimo Carlotto

Reading Massimo Carlotto’s crime novel The Goodbye Kiss, I was once again reminded how intriguing an unsympathetic main character can be in fiction.

My own novel No-Brainer features a main character some readers find too hard to like. However, I do ascribe to the accepted truism of writing that the reader should care for the main character and preferably like them enough to root for them. I also wrote elsew...