One key aspect of August Wilson's Fences is that the protagonist, Troy, is a virtually unlikeable guy who is hard to connect to as a reader, and I for one have mixed feelings about him. Among all the other novels I have read, there has only really been one other main character I can relate that to: Thomas Covenant of the Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever series. He starts out the series as a seriously depressed leper who is recently divorced and is a social outcast because of his condition. He becomes more and more reclusive until he tries to save a little girl. The people of the village twist the story around against him and then view him as dangerous and a plague to the town. As an act of defiance he enters the village from his home on the outskirts, but in a strange twist he is hit by a car.
He awakes to find himself in a new world, as if in a fantasy novel, where magic and mythical creatures are plentiful. It turns out that in this world he is destined to be the hero who saves the world, but there's only one problem. He doesn't even believe the world exists. His bitterness and anger from the "real" world also follow him, and he ends up raping his rescuer. Throughout the series, mixed in with the conflict between good and evil, Thomas Covenant has a personal war of morals and emotion within himself and struggles to determine what's real and what's not.
Anyway, it's a fantastic series, and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in fantasy books. Thomas Covenant is a unique character that makes the series a very worthwhile read.
I challenge anyone else to think of a character like Troy or Thomas Covenant. It's rare to come across such characters, and they make unlikely heroes, but this only adds to the entertainment of the book.
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