Reddit mentions of Matilda Bone

It's probably pretty telling that the character I relate to most in fiction is pretty damn unlikeable. That would be Victoria/Egg in Boy Proof: self-sufficient, cynical, and obsessively nerdy while pushing everyone away. It was so refreshing to read about a character who didn't have friends fawning over her and wasn't treated as a martyr because people weren't fawning over her. Narratively, the situation was a pretty clear-cut case of "You really brought that on yourself, you know" rather than "Poor MC!"

I will draw a distinction between characters who are meant to be unlikeable, characters who are inadvertently unlikeable, and characters I probably wouldn't want to be friends with in real life.

Whether your MC is a hero(ine) or antihero(ine), you're supposed to be rooting for them. Everyone thinks they're the hero of their own story, and they should have internal motivations and justifications to match. The bully isn't spreading a rumor about the girl she hates because she's a bully: she's doing it because she feels she deserves it. Show why she thinks the objective victim deserves it. Maybe she humiliated her at the science fair and she's been nursing a grudge. Maybe she gave her a nasty look on the bus. Maybe everyone thinks she's Little Miss Perfect and she's not. Maybe the evidence said she stole the money but she didn't really. Reading about these justifications and looking at situations from another perspective is why reading good fiction makes you more empathetic: you get to know characters who have entirely different thought processes.

Some more examples:

Meant to be unlikeable, but you're rooting for them because you understand them:

• Gilly in The Great Gilly Hopkins (MG about foster care) - angry, rude, thieving
  
• Elisa in The Girl of Fire and Thorns (YA fantasy about a fat, religious princess) - borderline case as I thought she was a very sympathetic character, but she does wallow quite a bit in self-pity before she develops a (seriously impressive) spine.
  
• Tris in the Circle of Magic books (MG-YA fantasy about mage school) - abrasive and prickly
  
• Daisy in How I Live Now (YA WWIII) - emotionally flat
  
• Eleanor in Eleanor & Park (YA contemporary set in the 80s) - pretty sure the reader is meant to understand that Eleanor is isolated by both personality and circumstance. She's not exactly reaching out to anyone.
  
• Claudia in Incarceron (YA steampunk/fantasy mashup) - imperious, demanding, self-centered
  
• Meggy in Alchemy and Meggy Swan (MG historical fiction) - cranky and resistant to change
  
• Matilda in Matilda Bone (MG historical fiction) - pious and judgmental
  
  Meant to be likeable and they're not:
  
  
• Ivy Rowe in Fair and Tender Ladies (adult historical fiction about Appalachia) - twit
  
• Eve in... Eve (YA dystopia) - self-centered twit
  
• Tris in Divergent (YA dystopia) - no discernible personality that I could find to base a judgment on
  
• Briar Wilkes in Boneshaker (YA steampunk + zombies) - Again with the lack of personality thing. Among all the characters, she came closest to having a personality, but was still a cardboard cutout.
  
  When characters are supposed to be likeable and they're just not, the fault usually seems to lie with the author for failing to tack on a complete, nuanced personality. Or, the personality is there and the decisions run entirely contrary to the informed traits and it's clearly not a case of "humans are occasionally inconsistent."
  
  I think what annoys me the most is when characters make dumb decisions that run contrary to what we know about that character. For example, in Eve, [when](#s "Caleb tells her that she should move on because all of the small children she supposedly loves and all of the men she's supposed to be deathly afraid of will certainly die when she is tracked, Eve throws a hissy fit because obviously he's a cruel man who doesn't want her love and is just trying to get rid of her.") Also, even though she's never seen a movie or really read about (what the reader knows as) modern times, "the crickets sound like cheerleaders!" :D :D :D This runs entirely contrary to what we're supposed to know about her (she's desperate to get to a different location, she's terrified of men, she protects people).
  
  In comparison, Nell from Into the Forest (adult dystopia) makes some [objectively terrible decisions](#s "like giving up a chance to return to society and fingering her sister"), but they make sense for the context and what we know about her character (scared of change, totally focused on the memories of her family). Daisy from How I Live Now is another unlikeable but sympathetic character making [bad decisions](#s "such as splitting up the group, obsessing about an incestuous relationship, etc"), but again they're presented in a way that makes sense for her mindset and circumstances.
  
  Likeable characters I probably wouldn't want to be friends with, but root for anyways:
  
  
• Aly in Trickster's Choice - keeps trying to score points off people with snark and humiliating come-uppances. Fun to read about, but annoying in real life.
  
• Gemma Doyle in A Great and Terrible Beauty - overly concerned with being in the popular crowd, which is not my thing.
  
• Tally from Uglies - again with popularity as a major motivation
  
• Anna in A Countess Below Stairs - so selfless she'd make me suspicious
  
  These girls have complete personalities and are sympathetic in text despite their flaws. However, I feel like I "know" them well enough that I can tell we probably wouldn't get along in real life.
  
  tl;dr: Readers are supposed to root for the MC even if they are objectively unlikeable. When the reader doesn't want to root for the MC, it's probably because the author didn't convey their personality clearly or consistently. I wouldn't want to be real-life friends with many of my favorite characters.

Catherine, Called Birdy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine,_Called_Birdy

Or by the same author, Matilda Bone?

https://smile.amazon.com/Matilda-Bone-Karen-Cushman-ebook/dp/B00CR6XSOA/ref=sr\_1\_5?keywords=Catherine%2C+Called+Birdy&qid=1555563676&s=gateway&sr=8-5