Great Novels About Terrible People - Page 2

If every hero were as gentle and wise as Atticus Finch, every heroine as noble and resourceful as Katniss Everdeen, every villain as dastardly and irredeemable as Lord Voldemort, well . . . we might as well just all watch reruns of "The Brady Bunch" since we'd be living in one simplistic universe. It's easy to write bad books about bad people (I'm looking at YOU, Bret Easton Ellis), but it takes talent and insight to create a complex, attractive, and thoroughly detestable protagonist. And then there's Dreiser.