The Scariest Characters of 2011
It’s been a big year for monsters. While vampires continued to dominate popular culture in 2011, and zombies are lurching along to become the it-corpses of the moment, some of the year’s scariest characters aren’t likely to be emulated in your local Halloween parade. From sociopathic boyfriends to deranged chess superstars and truly evil talk show hosts, here are the creatures from this past year in literature that most haunted us.
G.H., Your Voice in My Head
G.H. isn’t your run-of-the-mill bad boyfriend. For one thing, he’s a famous movie star, and for another, well, he’s a sociopath. “Gypsy Husband,” as Emma Forrest sometimes refers to him in her memoir of mental illness, seems at first like a perfect dreamboat: writing romantic poetry, sending feverish text messages, and buying clothing for their hypothetical future daughter. But then one day he’s gone, departing with only a flimsy one-liner. Between the dopamine squirts and the desertion is a portrait of exactly the sort of man even the most mentally stable women should avoid. The pathological charmer just may be our culture’s devil in disguise. – Alice Gregory
The Man in the Gray Suit, The Night Circus </i.
He has no real name, no distinct personality, barely the hint of a soul. The man who plucks a young boy from an orphanage to teach him the ways of magic – all so the child could grow into a well-trained pawn in the elaborate competition vividly portrayed in The Night Circus – contains not a shred of fatherly devotion to his charge, not a hint of empathy. As the contest broadens in scope, and the competitors grow more colorful and vulnerable to their passions, the man in the gray suit remains as restrained as his nondescript wardrobe. Such a cipher has no appreciation for beauty, no use for romance, certainly no compassion for human suffering. He’s only in it for the win. – Maris Kreizman
Paps, We the Animals
Paps is a charmer, until he’s not. He married Ma when they were both only teenagers. A decade and three kids later, he still flirts with her as though their home was really homeroom, but he also torments her like he’s the class bully. The unnamed young narrator of Justin Torres’s novel We the Animals lives in awe and fear of his father, who between buying trucks without seatbelts and spearheading adventures, threatens and beats Ma and often takes off without warning. When your patriarch is “Paps”, it pays to take promises with a grain of salt. – Alice Gregory
Bobby Fischer, Endgame
Just like in Jaws, you don’t get a good look at the monster in the early going. Little Bobby Fischer’s just a chess fiend – admirable, even endearing, what with his modest roots and dedication to the game. But, like an ominous bassoon riff or a fin rising to the surface, some telltale clues to the world champion’s impending megalomaniacal madness do draw your attention: diva-ish emotional tirades, sudden and conflicting religious moodswings, random anti-Semitic, anti-Russian outbursts (never mind his own Russian and Jewish heritage). Eventually, due to the usual chemical and social inequities that cause such things, Fischer squanders all the money, fame and international goodwill, loses his place in polite society, and loosens his grip on reality. In this version, the shark destroys itself. – Patrick Rapa
Chelsea Handler, Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me
“Working for her is very much like working for a highly functioning, oversexed drunken chimpanzee.” So says Chelsea Lately writer Johnny Kansas, detailing innumerable abuses at the hands of his tyrant boss. She steals his clothes, hides meatballs in his new car, commits email fraud when he leaves his computer unattended, punishes him physically and mentally all day, every day.
Because, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the E! talk show host is a menace, as the essays and anecdotes in this collection will attest. More victims line up from there, character witnesses half-trying to laugh it off but plainly looking for a higher authority to step in and stop this foul-mouthed harpy. Do not be swayed by her good looks and agile tongue; even she acknowledges her monstrousness. “I’m not proud of myself. I have made a career out of being a misanthrope with the maturity level of an eight-year-old who had to repeat the third grade several times.” – Patrick Rapa
The Bird Man, Swamplandia
The world Karen Russell creates in her debut novel is the stuff of busted up fairy tales, equal parts whimsy and menace. Although there’s little magic left in the decrepit Florida theme park run by Ava Bigtree’s gator-wrestling family, Ava still believes in heroes and happy endings. When her sister Osceola runs away (possibly to elope with a ghost!), Ava enlists the help of the man charged with clearing the buzzards from her family’s property to help track her down. The Bird Man starts out as a noble sort of oddball, a loner in a big feathered coat who just might be worthy of his new young friend’s unwavering trust. But as they journey through the desolate Florida swamps in search of Osceola, it becomes heartbreakingly clear that the Bird Man’s motives are not as innocent as they first appeared. He’s nothing more than a wolf in avian clothes. – Maris Kreizman
Jake, The Last Werewolf
Like all narrators, Jacob Marlowe elicits a degree of sympathy just for showing up, but he’s no hero. There are no heroes in Glen Duncan’s wild first foray into gothic genre fiction; just about everybody you meet is a whore or a vampire, sometimes metaphorically, sometimes not. And Jake, despite his erudition and philosophizing – what do you expect from a nigh-immortal and worldly 200-plus-year-old lycanthrope? – eschews his gentlemanly form once a month to moonlight as an indefensible and oversexed abomination. And then, yeah, look out. He knows the deal: “I keep telling myself I’m just an outmoded idea. But you know, you find yourself ripping a child open and swallowing its heart, it’s tough not to be overwhelmed by the concrete reality of yourself.” – Patrick Rapa
The Robots, Robopocalypse
At first glance, the hive-minded baddies in Daniel H. Wilson’s pulp epic fit the classic ’50s sci-fi mold: single-minded, unnatural, manmade. But these suddenly sentient automatons get extra terror points for their people skills. They don’t just bring down civilization with superior firepower and numbers, they work the system: tricking construction crews into building a robot home base, imitating human voices over the phone and on the battlefield, reanimating human corpses and aligning them against us. They’re assholes. Straight up. – Patrick Rapa
Dr. Annick Swenson, State of Wonder
Picture Kurtz from Heart of Darkness as a renegade gynecologist and you’d have Dr. Annick Swenson, the imposing figure at the center of Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder. If rumors are to be believed, the reclusive scientist has fallen off the grid and gone native while researching a potential miracle drug deep in the Amazon. When Dr. Marina Singh journeys down to the jungle to investigate a colleague’s death, it’s Swenson – her former mentor – who looms most menacingly in the snake-infested wilderness; more so than the blood-sucking mosquitoes that perpetually buzz about, even more than the fierce tribe of cannibals that lives downriver from Swenson’s camp. Swenson wields a potent mix of intellectual intimidation and straight up crazy. You can’t be sure if she’ll cause physical harm, or simply give you the most mortifying dressing down in history. Either way, she’s a terror. – Maris Kreizman
Eli and Charlie Sisters, The Sisters Brothers
Even for Gold Rush-era hitmen, Eli and Charles Sisters are bastards: They’ll punch a kindly woman in the stomach, rip off a whore and cheat at a gentleman’s duel. The dusty, ramshackle towns in their wake are often strewn with blood and humiliation, and while we readers can’t shrug off the cruelty as easily as the Sisters do, we gotta admit: These are men of action, and we kinda admire that about them. Their unpredictable viciousness (and occasional thoughtfulness) carries Patrick DeWitt’s re-spinning of the Old West yarn.
- Patrick Rapa
