I try to think of characters who on the surface of their actions are deeply unsympathetic.

It's the writer's job to make them sympathetic, in spite of themselves. - John Irving

It's always a difficult thing to write through a child's eyes-now, I'm a fan of the device for several reasons: it allows for an unreliable narrator, it gives people a protagonist who's sympathetic and it lets the author set up a sort of feedback tension that's more difficult with an adult character.
Which is why I couldn't figure out why the latest Canada Reads winner, Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill was leaving me cold.

Until I mentioned the book to a friend who leaped into a passionate diatribe against it. Her problem with it was that the main character, "Baby", a thirteen year old girl with a drug addict father and a life path you can see clearly from the outset can only go one way, had no agency, no volition of her own. Everything that happens, happens TO her. My friends' position was that this is rarely true but that people don't LIKE books that intimate that someone could contribute to the horrific events that befall them and still not deserve them.

I see her point, and it's an interesting one. I think that sort of 'innocent bystander' trope is integral to the genre but I'd like to see someone make an attempt at writing from the point of view of a child who's an active participant in their life, not a victim of it. A nuanced portrait of a somewhat unlikeable youth who isn't precocious or otherwise endearing to the reader but who transcends the label of victim.
THAT would be a neat trick for a writer to pull off.
Anyone know of one that fits the bill?