This gave me food for thought as a lot of the books I read include narrators / characters that are not the sort of people that you would want to identify yourself with – Patrick Bateman, for example or Vernon God Little, any of McEwan or Amis’ impossibly difficult narrators. Also, I felt that didn’t identify with any narrators who are mentally ill in The Bell Jar, Surfacing, Catcher in the Rye or One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest, for example.

The first character that I can remember really appealing to me was Jo in Little Women. In fact, I went on to read the rest of that series of books many times because I liked her character so much. One of the first things that Jo does in Little Women is cut off her beautiful long hair and she is frequently found to be doing things that were considered slightly unsuitable for her sex. This appealed to me at age 12 when I first read it as I was a tomboy and really didn’t see the point in make-up, dolls, jewellery or any of the other things that nearly teenage girls seem to be obsessed with. It was good to find a kindred spirit.

It is surprising that I have managed to get this far in this challenge without mentioning Margaret Atwood who is one of my favourite authors and one of the few writers where I have enjoyed all that I have read by her. Her female characters often seem to find life difficult in similar ways to me. The character I have chosen is Tony from The Robber Bride. I related to her straight away as she is left handed (as am I) and as a result of this learns how to write backwards. (This is a logical conclusion. If you have ever watched anyone left handed write, you will see how awkward it is. It would make much more sense to write backwards.) Furthermore, she is constantly reversing words in her head and sometimes out loud in conversation. It often feels as if the world is entirely the wrong way round when you are left handed. It seems that this has even effected Tony’s thought patterns and language use. Often the backwards words were exotic looking, forming a new language that only Tony could understand. It made me wish for the ability myself.