I find Maggie Walsh, from the book Angels by Marian Keyes, to be a fascinating character. She is such an excellent example of a person who people believe to be a certain way, but in actual fact has many hidden qualities and thinks completely differently to how they are perceived. Her sister, Helen, cruelly compares Maggie to plain yoghurt at room temperature, whereas Maggie thinks she is more like a trifle with hidden depths. I have to say that Helen, witty as she is, does not look beyond the cover and there is, in fact, more to Maggie than meets the eye.
The example of this is where Maggie, seemingly the most sensible one of the Walsh sisters, leaves her husband, loses her job and jets off to LA leaving her family behind open mouthed in shock.
Compared to her sisters, however, Maggie is the sensible one. She has a pension, she pays off her credit card most months and has a separate savings account for Ladies' Nice Things. But just because she is sensible in certain ways this doesn't stop her from hurting when her husband talks about the chocolates as though they'd had them before, when really it was with another woman. It doesn't stop her hurting when her sisters treat her as a figure of fun or unfairly treat Garv, her husband, as a tightwad.
But she doesn't get all diva-ish. She doesn't slam doors, have strops or shout a lot as her sisters do and say how this is all unfair. Instead she keeps it inside, turning it over and trying to make sense of it. Something I'm sure a lot of us can relate to.
Believe me, I'm not saying she is perfect and her sisters aren't. I love her sisters (except Helen, at the moment, I can't wait for her story to come out so I can see what is really happening in her head) and Maggie does let many of these assumptions about her go by without contradicting anyone.
Like the other sisters, Maggie is a fighter. She shows no self pity when she leaves for LA and instead, gets on with her new life, throws herself into it and eventually wakes up to herself. Claire Allan, author of Rainy Days & Tuesdays, describes Maggie as one of her favourite heroines in this interview because, she proved that you can find happiness right under your nose. Along with her hidden depths, making Maggie a far more interesting character than what she initially appears, I have to agree with that. She also has the courage, not only to leave a bad situation, but also to come back when she realises what is really important.