Hello, Friday Fiction Friends! To Kill a Mockingbird is definitely in my top ten books, so when I finally found a few moments, I was excited to check out Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. First, I must admit it’s very different from Lee’s first novel. But published fifty-five years later, I’m not surprised. During my research, I discovered that Harper Lee had actually written this book first, but her publishers wanted her to write about Scout as a child. After the success of To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee found it hard to write anymore, which is very sad.
Her storytelling and strong characters in this later novel still drew me in. There were moments of brilliance within the pages that made me despair that I could ever be a writer of that caliber. There were also long discourses that seemed a little preachy (as we say in the South), where I felt the author’s intrusion of her strong opinions. Overall, I like the way Scout struggles with her move from New York back to her old hometown. And how she finally can reconcile her past life with her present one.
Overall, I would recommend this novel. I really struggled to put it down because I just had to know what happened. Especially in the relationship between Atticus and Scout and the one between Scout and Hank. Make sure you read both books because that is the best way to get back into life in Maycomb, Alabama.
Have you read either of these books? I would love to know what you think…
A landmark novel by Harper Lee, set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch—“Scout”—returns home to Maycomb, Alabama, from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town, and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman and a world in painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past—a journey that can only be guided by one’s own conscience.
