Characters you Love to Hate

Sometimes when I’m reading a story, I feel really strongly about the characters.  Sometimes there’s a character that I hate so much that I’ll keep reading, just to try and understand them… or in the hope that they redeem themselves… or simply to make absolutely sure they get their comeuppance.

Who are the characters you love to hate?  Some that I could think of are:

Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley
Count Olaf and his theatre troup in the Series of Unfortunate Events stories by Lemony Snicket
Mr Wickham from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (although Mr Collins is also in the running)
The Ringmaster in Water for Elephants
Cersei Lannister in George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones (plus another few characters that I can’t help but really hate, but can’t tell you about – because of SPOILERS)
Randal Flagg in Steven King’s The Stand
Javert in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables
Mr Harvey in The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Grandmother in Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews
Voldeort/Snape in the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
Peter Wiggin in Orscon Scott Card’s Enders Game (and Achilles de Flandres in the subsequent Ender stories)
Count Fosco from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The entire cast of Christopher Tsiolkas’s The Slap
Prissy Andrews and Rachel Gilbert in L  M Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables
Joyce Barnhardt from Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series
The Judge in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian

Jenn