Most people seem to conjure up characters in their head quite easily. They have a very haunting image of the person, almost as vivid as someone in real life. They know exactly what Elizabeth Bennet or Jay Gatsby or Jane Eyre look like, while I have no such image.
If I have a vivid picture of someone, it's only because I've seen them in drawings or films - like Miss Marple, Frankenstein's Monster, Oliver Twist or Winnie the Pooh. I may know what they look like even if I haven't read the book - like Harry Potter.
It's frustrating because I feel I'm not really enjoying a book fully, I'm not totally immersed in it, if I can't picture the characters in my head. I can follow the plot and know what's going on, but there's something missing. It's like being in a very bare room with only a few sticks of furniture.
I guess I just have an inability to translate words into a visual image. They remain words and for some reason don't fire up my imagination as they should.
I'd love to see novels that have illustrations of all the main characters. I seem to remember that being a common practice when I was young (in Dickens for instance), but somewhere along the line they got dropped.
