Go Set a Watchman: A Novel

The Enigma That Is Atticus Finchby Don Sugg“People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for.”― Harper Lee, To Kill a MockingbirdAlthough not nearly as artfully crafted as her classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s 1957 first novel, Go Set a Watchman, contains flashes of why she is considered by many to be one of the premier twentieth century American novelists. This newly published novel had been rejected for publication until Lee re-wrote it from the perspective of Jean Louise, not as an adult, but as a child ranging in age between six and eight. To Kill a Mockingbird, subsequently went on to become one of the most widely read and deeply beloved American novels and films of all time, read and viewed by millions of students and adults alike. In Watchman’s first chapter, Lee immerses the reader in the same small, imaginary, and seemingly bucolic town of Maycomb, Alabama, in a manner that even the most ardent of Yankees will embrace. However, as one might suspect, there is something rotten in the town of Maycomb.Although Watchman focuses on the same characters we learned to love in Mockingbird, albeit twenty years later, the public reaction to it has been dramatically different. Despite there having been more pre-publication anticipation of Watchman than any novel since the Harry Potter series, there has been widespread indignation and gnashing of teeth by Mockingbird fans who, upon reading Watchman, discover that their sainted hero, Atticus Finch, turns out to be a far more complex, three-dimensional human being - one with warts, secrets, prejudices, and all. One couple, who had named their son Atticus, actually went so far as to have his name legally changed after they read Watchman.The great Canadian author, Robertson Davies, once wrote “You never read the same book twice”. This is certainly true of To Kill a Mockingbird. Taking the opportunity afforded by the publication of Watchman to revisit Mockingbird from an adult perspective and engaging in a careful, more critical reading, the reader may well come away with a very different view of Atticus Finch. Looking beyond the naïve perspective of his adoring daughter, Scout, and closely examining the more subtle facts of the story, we can see what a flawed man Atticus actually is - both as an attorney and as a father. Of his three criminal cases mentioned in the book, his first two ended with his clients being hanged. In the third, his client, Tom Robinson, is wrongly convicted of raping a white woman and subsequently commits suicide-by-cop. Even though Atticus knew full well that Tom could never receive a fair trial in racist Maycomb, he negligently fails to file a pre-trial motion for change of venue. Upon being asked why, he simply mumbles an inaudible response. On cross-examination, he never asks Mayella about sending her siblings away so that she could seduce Tom, nor does he call any of them as witnesses to corroberate Tom’s story. Despite complaining in his closing argument that the prosecution provided no medical evidence that a rape had been committed, Atticus himself fails to produce any medical testimony regarding Tom's disability. Instead he relies on a cheap and ultimately unconvincing courtroom stunt that could easily have been faked. Although it makes for a compelling visual image in both the book and the film, it simply doesn’t pass for good trial practice. Thus despite Atticus’s claims to the contrary, the only apparent issue available to poor Tom on appeal would seem to have been ineffective assistance of counsel.Atticus also proves himself to be an even worse father than attorney. Although the rest of the town attends the school pageant, Atticus selfishly and neglectfully refuses to escort Scout, electing instead to stay home and pay Jem to take her in his stead. He does this knowing that Bob Ewell who had threatened revenge on Atticus for his defense of Tom Robinson was openly accusing Atticus of getting him fired from his WPA job. Ewell had also recently attempted to break into Judge Taylor’s house and repeatedly harassed Tom Robinson’s widow, Helen. Had Atticus taken Scout to the pageant himself, Bob Ewell’s attack on Jem and Scout likely would never have occurred. Even after the attack, Atticus shows no remorse for his poor decision. Incredulously, Atticus, an experienced criminal defense attorney, actually encourages Sheriff Tate to bring a homicide charge against Jem for killing Bob Ewell. He does this despite the fact that Jem’s diminutive size and broken arm would have logically precluded him from having committed the stabbing. Why didn’t Atticus wait until Jem had regained consciousness and gotten his version of the events? When Boo Radley carried the injured and unconscious Jem home, why didn’t he even ask Boo Radley what had happened? How was Jem rendered unconscious after he had supposedly mortally wounded Ewell? Why was Atticus so willing, even anxious, to bring Jem to trial for the death of the very man whose testimony convinced the jury to find the innocent Tom Robinson guilty of rape? The obvious answer to these questions is that the seemingly wise and virtuous Atticus had such faith in the judicial system (despite the fact that it had convicted the innocent Tom Robinson), that he was convinced that a jury would see that Jem acted in self-defense and acquit him of any wrongdoing. But if we are to accept this as true, where was Atticus's faith in and devotion to the law only moments later when he was more than willing to be complicit in withholding material evidence that it was Boo Radley and not Jem who had in fact killed Bob Ewell? It begs credulity to think that Aticus might share Sheriff Tate’s concern with protecting Boo Radley from the ladies of Maycomb bringing him cake to the extent that he would be willing to jeopardize his own son’s life and liberty. Was he more apprehensive of the impact that the appearance of a cover-up of a crime allegedly committed by Jem would have on his own reputation and political career than he was for Jem’s wellbeing? The often overlooked beauty of Mockingbird is the fact that for the careful and thoughtful reader, these remain open questions.In Go Set a Watchman, Atticus is again shown to be a flawed hero. However, this time the moral imperfections of his daughter, Jean Louise (Scout in Mockingbird), are likewise brought to light. In the end, both characters' bigotry is exposed. But even more importantly, so is the bigotry of readers who fail to recognize that Lee is again challenging them to walk in another's shoes. But whereas it was relatively easy for the empathetic reader to walk in the shoes of Tom Robinson or Boo Radley, here Lee demands that readers take a more uncomfortable walk in the shoes of mid-twentieth century southerners, people who see their culture, values, and customs being decimated by the likes of the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and an army of invading northern NAACP attorneys. Atticus recognizes full well both the need for and the inevitability of change. He simply objects to how the changes being rammed down their throats by what he sees as arrogant and equally bigoted northerners.Lee’s call for tolerance and acceptance in Watchman brings to mind President Abraham Lincoln’s then nearly century old admonition to a war-torn country at the end of his Second Inaugural Address:With malice toward none, and charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. (emphasis added)Of Mockingbird, Flannery O’Connor observed that “for a child's book it does all right. It's interesting that all the folks that are buying it don't know they're reading a child's book. Somebody ought to say what it is." But critic Stephen Metcalff was not only a little kinder, he was a little closer to the mark when he stated that “To Kill a Mockingbird is a type of literature Americans are most comfortable abiding, because it makes them most abidingly comfortable with themselves.” Go Set a Watchman provides no such comfort for its readers, which likely played a role in the book originally being rejected for publication. Rather, Watchman provides a rude awakening for those Mockingbird fans who share the younger Jean Louise’s blind adoration of Atticus. Here, when Jean Louise proves unable to walk in the shoes of Calpurnia, the black servant who had raised her as a child, she is then shocked and emotionally crushed by Calpurnia’s rejection of her offer to have Atticus defend her grandson and Calpurnia’s ability to only see “white folks” when she looks at Jean Louise. In a similar manner, Lee holds up a mirror to those readers who rather comfortably felt able to walk in the shoes of a Tom Robinson or Boo Radley by laying bare their inability to take a little stroll in the shoes of an aging, flawed, and yes, bigoted mid-twentieth century southern gentleman. I suspect that despite its relative lack of literary artistry, Ms. O’Connor would be far more pleased with Watchman than she was with Mockingbird.Just as the adult Jean Louise learns to look beyond her idealized childhood image of Atticus, Lee demands the same of her reader. Accordingly, it would be a mistake to simply dismiss Watchman as yet another bitter coming of age story with the adult child suddenly recognizing the previously idealized parent’s imperfections. Jean Louise comes to terms with her own frailties, imperfections and character deficiencies by way of learning to appreciate this more fully human Atticus Finch. By virtue of Atticus’s unconditional acceptance and even celebration of the development of his daughter’s independent mind - in spite of the bitterly scathing and venomous personal attack she levies at him - the Atticus of Watchman proves to be a far wiser, loving, and indeed more heroic father than Scout’s naïve childhood image of him that was shared by most Mockingbird readers.Clearly, Watchman is not a book about redemption. However, when it is read together with Mockingbird, the two books combine to provide a powerful insight into not just the necessity for but also the difficulty of attaining tolerance, acceptance, and ultimately reconciliation - on both individual and cultural levels.Unfortunately, after having their saintly image of Atticus Finch shattered, I fear that far too many teachers who have for years or even decades devotedly taught their students to emulate his seemingly uncompromising virtues will refuse to accept the fundamental truth of a flawed Atticus as revealed by a careful reading of Mockingbird in conjunction with a reading of Watchman. They will reject the opportunity to use Watchman to teach their students just how profoundly difficult wrestling with ideas and beliefs that conflict with their own can be. In doing so, they will deny their students a unique opportunity to develop their own more informed, open-minded, and tolerant worldview, one which is required to deal with a world populated by people who are far more complex than the cookie-cutter characters presented by Scout’s innocent and youthful perspective in Mockingbird. For such teachers, walking in the shoes of another applies only to those whose shoes already fit their own feet.

As soon as I heard a "new" novel by Harper Lee was coming out I instantly pre-ordered it. This is unusual for me as I tend to wait until closer to publication to order books by favorite authors or even wait until well after publication for those I know I will eventually want to read, but being that To Kill A Mockingbird is in the top five of my favorite novels of all time I knew I wanted it in my hands as soon as possible. After ordering it I began to read all the negative hype and backlash towards the book (I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about) and saw many fellow readers declaring they would not buy or read this novel that turned one of the iconic perfect fathers in literature into a racist. While I can completely understand their hurt and anger (I also grew up feeling Atticus was a shining example of what a man should be) I have never been one to shy away from reading something just because the subject matter might be hard to read or others seem against it. Without reading it I wouldn't be able to form my own opinion on its content or really know how it would affect my appreciation for To Kill A Mockingbird. So I dug in and devoured it at every free moment I had. Am I happy I read it? 100%. This is a wonderful companion to Harper Lee's classic work of art and, as the synopsis states, adds depth to those characters we all grew up loving.When the novel opens, Jean Louise Finch is returning home to Maycomb, Alabama for her yearly two week visit. She's grown used to the big city and, while she has fond memories of the small town she grew up in and grudging respect for this place that never seems to change, from the get-go she seems almost ready for the visit to be over. There are things that pull on her to come home and stay - her father, her beau - but she's not sure if that's the life she wants. Then she discovers that none of the people, including the father that she's always kept on a pedestal of righteousness, are who she thought they were. I really don't want to give away too much about the actual plot, but suffice it to say that what she discovers regarding the opinions and beliefs of those she has cherished are not what she thought they were and she goes on the warpath to let her great indignation and disgust be known before she plans to leave for good. This isn't the end of the story and I won't give away how it ends but this is the main focus.What I loved most about Go Set A Watchman was the way that everything Jean Louis was experiencing, every burst of shock, anger and disbelief, so well mirrored what I was feeling. How could these people not be who they had always been? Why had they changed? What has happened to bring about this great shift in reality? The answer, simply, is that nothing has actually changed other than the rose-tinted glasses of youth (which was what To Kill A Mockingbird was viewed through) have been removed and in the light of maturity and understanding this is the actual reality it has been all along. Jean Louise, and we readers, are faced with the fact that no one is perfect and everyone is human and therefore flawed. This might be hard to swallow but it is true. The real test of maturity, and what Jean Louise comes to realize, is that we are each responsible for our own beliefs, opinions and actions and, while we can do everything we can to influence other people and try to show them the "correct" way to be, each individual is responsible for themselves and must face the choices and consequences that brings. The overall theme I was left with after turning the last page is what is written in the Serenity Prayer: you must have the serenity to accept the things you cannot change (other people's beliefs), the courage to change the things you can (change the laws governing our society and punish those that break those laws) and the wisdom to know the difference. We shouldn't change our beliefs for anyone else and we shouldn't expect the reverse either. The key is to try to present information and reasonable arguments to influence those around us and, by doing so, illicit the changes that are needed. Burying your head in the sand or screaming your disgust and running away from a problem is never going to give you the results you want, but by rationally presenting your opinions and valid solutions to the issues you at least stand a chance at making a difference. Easier said that done, I know, especially when faced with views and opinions many of us find disgusting and heinous, but there you have it.Do I think Go Set A Watchman is as good as To Kill A Mockingbird? No, not at all but I don't think that is necessarily a fair comparison either, especially given the fact that the latter novel is such a treasure to me. However, I did enjoy seeing so many of these beloved characters again, even if I wasn't happy with all of them, and there were many lines I read over and over because they were beautifully written. This is an accurate depiction of many small Southern towns during the Civil Rights movement and presents a realistic view of the good and the bad that you would have found there. Harper Lee is a remarkable writer and I can only hope that she did intend for this novel to be published (another one of those rumors floating around). I'll be thinking about this one for a while to come.

With all that's been said about Harper Lee's new (second? First? Found? First draft?) book, Go Set a Watchman, it's been hard to form a fully realized opinion. Even before I had opened my copy, social media exploded with denunciations.Still, with that depressing prelude--who wants to read something that is the subject of a public pillory?--I read it anyway. To be honest, I was disappointed. I passed judgement on the novel as a mishmash of ideas, heavy on dialogue and light on action. Worst, it committed the cardinal sin of messing Atticus Finch, a character I cherished.In short, my knee jerk response was not very different from anyone else's.And yet, since finishing a week ago, I haven't been able to let the book go. There was something unsettling to me about how blithely the publication of the novel had been perceived as a greedy money grab by the publisher. The book isn't horrible, though it is a little disappointing, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to understand what I had read. A friend opined that in future years the two books (To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman) would be read together as part of literature classes, and it got me wanting to understand better.And so, I've begun to evolve my opinions about Go Set a Watchman. It is better--no, it is more nuanced--than I initially judged it. More, Atticus is perhaps more nuanced than To Kill a Mockingbird. It is without a doubt worth a read.Review: Go Set a Watchman by Harper LeeHarper LeeA little about where the book comes from. According to the publisher, the book was found in Lee’s archives, where she had forgotten that it still existed. In a press release from HarperCollins, Lee explained:"In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called Go Set a Watchman. It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout's childhood, persuaded me to write a novel from the point of view of the young Scout. I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn't realized it had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought and hesitation I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years."Needless to say, there are plenty who doubt the authenticity of the statement or Lee’s willingness to step into the spotlight. New Republic’s William Giraldi is typical of this group:"Those crafty touches—“much thought and hesitation,” “my dear friend,” “people I trust”—are trying a tad too hard, wouldn’t you say? The spotlight-shunning Lee is “amazed” that she will once again be subjected to a freshet of attention, the very soaking she’d organized her life to avoid. The only thing amazing here is the expectation that literate people would be hoodwinked by attributed language that bears hallmarks of subterfuge."To_Kill_a_MockingbirdYeah. No pulling punches there.Denunciations range from accusations that her agent/attorney bypassed Lee (plenty of snarky comments about the corporate greed of publishing CEOs), that she is too old and senile to know what she's doing, that the book was never really lost in the first place, and, finally, that publication is a coup due to the recent passing of Lee’s longtime caretaker and counsel.It doesn’t hurt that since Lee had a stroke in 2007 she is said to have trouble seeing and has almost completely lost her hearing. From there it’s not much of a leap for naysayers to dismiss Go Set a Watchman as the greedy exploitation of an aged and famous writer.The problem? For every denunciation, there is also evidence to the contrary. No less than the New York Times quoted family and friends from Lee’s community that claimed that they had seen her recently and that she was a spry and alert as ever."Other people who have seen Ms. Lee more recently say that she is physically frail but completely lucid. Mr. Nurnberg described her as “feisty” when he visited her this month. He said that while she was “indeed hesitant” to publish the book, she had been persuaded by a close circle of people who had read it and assured her that it stood up to her monumental first book."Wayne Flynt, an Alabama author and historian who has been close friends with Ms. Lee for more than a decade, said she was as sharp as ever when he visited her on Monday, quoting lines from “Macbeth.”"“I don’t think that anybody that says she’s demented has been to see her in the last 10 years,” Mr. Flynt said. “The problem may be that almost nobody goes to see her, almost nobody gets in. She’s such a private person.”"zeplinstumblrcom (1)Nevertheless, as Jonathan Haidt argues in The Righteous Mind, we are not scientists seeking truth, but lawyers seeking supporting evidence of our theses. Or, as the slightly more well-known Taylor Swift puts it, haters gonna hate.People find the evidence to fit the thesis they want.In practice, it didn’t take the internet long to jump to absolute dismissal of the entire book. Reducio ad absurdum: the book is an absolute mess and, according to all too many folk who have yet to read the book themselves, should not be read.To be fair, the one person I know who did read the book was disappointed. Writers don’t tell him how to do his job, and so he won’t tell writers how to do his, he said.Fair enough. He read and evaluated it for himself.Which leads to an important point: the difference between reading and passing judgement versus taking your opinion from what the internet mob tells you. Doing the homework--reading the book--is just too hard.This isn’t an idle gripe, either, or me playing a book snob card. Taking the judgments of the social media jury cum mob as legit is a real and harmful effect on the intellectual life of the average American. American intellectual life shouldn't be rooted in the ivory towers of higher education. On the contrary, healthy democracy sees the working class self-informing and educating, reading and discussing. Sure, elite academics, intellectuals and writers have a place, and I don’t mean to diminish their role. But regular people need to participate, need to engage, and need to decide for themselves what is worthy. If we only “reshare” across social media ad infinitum the gilded opinions of those smarter than ourselves, we are not only selling ourselves short, but also reducing our ability to pass informed judgement.Go read the book yourself. This is Harper freaking Lee we’re talking about. Even if the book is a failure, the woman produced what is arguably the most famous, most loved, and most memorable American novel of the last century. Something can be learned from such a mind. There'll never another To Kill a Mockingbird, but something can still be gleaned from Go Set a Watchman.So...what about the book itself? A failure? A first draft? A worthy successor to Lee’s legacy? Let’s look.First off, caveat: as a book reviewer: I’m no Allan Bloom, James Wood or Adam Kirsch.Take this with a grain of salt.From the minute I started Go Set a Watchman, I quickly fell into the writing. Lee’s style is as drawling and comfortable as the accents of the Deep South cast that fills its pages. And yet, the dialogue is often trite, the story jumbled, and the plot occasionally incongruous. Overall, it still feels like a first draft…which is exactly what the Lee’s editor thought when Lee shopped it around mid-century New York.And yet, there’s more to it than can be dismissed with vague complaints about the destruction of the Atticus Finch character as a bigot (Michiko Kakutani says that readers will be shocked by Atticus’s “affiliating with raving anti-integration, anti-black crazies, and the reader shares [Scout's] horror and confusion” and indeed, initially at least, this was my reaction). Sure, there is racism, but it's more the McGuffin of the story, as Jason Pettus portrays it in his review, than the theme.So back to my experience. After flying through the first two-thirds of the novel, I got bogged down and slogged through to the end. Go Set a Watchman takes place decades after To Kill a Mockingbird and indeed, it is the flashbacks in the book that Lee cribbed for the earlier published novel. In this iteration, Atticus has grown old, joined the local citizens committee that is synonymous with the Dixiecrat groups of the era that passed Jim Crow laws, forced legislatures to raise the Confederate battle flag over state capitals, and generally were responsible for much of the racism that seems so out of place today. Still, his racism feels circumstantial, a factor of his era, and if he is a bigot, he is the outlier among his people, making the best of the bad.And yet, there’s something in how Atticus is portrayed that falls short of the poisonous bigot that arm chair liberals denounce. Atticus is just not that simple, though it took me a bit of time to put my finger on why. Pettus’ review, again:"[T]here were plenty of reasons for Southerners to get behind racist organizations like these back then besides just pure racism; take Scout's enlightened fiancée, for example, who joins the citizens' council for the same reason he might join the Rotary Club, because he's a rising young lawyer and to not do so would damage his career. Or take Atticus himself, who as we learn by the end of the book hasn't really changed his stance towards black people from how he felt twenty years ago -- his joining the citizens' council has almost nothing to do with hating a man for the color of his skin, and almost everything to do with his obsessive belief in state rights versus a big federal government, and with his personal identity as a Jeffersonian liberal who believes that people need to "earn" the privileges of a free democracy by being informed, conscientious citizens who contribute to the greater good, not to have those privileges ram-rodded down everyone's throats by a meddling organization like the NAACP."Atticus’ concerns aren’t about racism so much as the interference of outsiders who don’t know or understand the local nuances, let alone have a vested interest in the future of the communities they parachute in to change. Atticus is concerned about the impact on the Constitution, on personal liberties, etc., in the “noble but misguided name of forcing "equality" on a situation that politically and economically can't handle it, complaints that even the urban liberal Scout sometimes agrees with over the course of the book[,]” argues Pettus.Yes, Atticus still behaves like a racist but, and this has been largely ignored, he would still be the first to defend a black man falsely accused.Which is entirely consistent with Atticus Finch that we all know and admire. If Lee has a theme here, it may be that life is much more complicated than the more simplistic black hat/white hat world she portrays in To Kill a Mockingbird.Could Lee have released the Go Set a Watchman right now for reasons other than the money (and let’s just all agree that the publisher doesn’t need other motives)? Could she be looking back at her legacy, recognizing that the simplistic morality of To Kill a Mockingbird is an unsatisfactory depiction of her view of the world?Judge for yourself. Pick up Go Set a Watchman, read it and consider if it isn’t more about the complexities of human relationships, of memory and of the passage of time than about racism and justice. It may not be the book that I wanted or expected, but I wonder if perhaps the judgments levied are perhaps too simplistic.

The literary event of 2015 asks the question, 'When is a sequel not a sequel?' Though Go Set A Watchman follows up with Scout, Atticus, Jem, Calpurnia, and many more characters from Lee's 1960 masterpiece 'To Kill A Mockingbird' it is not a sequel to the award winning classic. Instead, this book was actually the first draft for Mockingbird.Harper Lee finished the manuscript for this book in 1957. Her publisher liked this book but felt that it lacked a concrete plot. Also, editor Tay Hohoff felt that the flashback parts of when Scout, Jem, and Dill were kids were the best parts of the book and encouraged Lee to start over with that time period. I'm so glad Harper Lee listened to Hohoff.See, Mockingbird is my favorite book of all-time and though I read more comic books than fiction these days, I was counting down the days until this book dropped on July 14th. I'm such a fan of TKAM that I've read the book like 7 times (and it's the only novel I've read more than once, except for school assignments.) I'm such a fan of TKAM, I pre-ordered this book on Amazon. I'm such a fan of TKAM, I even paid a little extra on shipping so that the book was delivered to my door on the day the book came out.Go Set A Watchman is a book frought with controversy. First many question as to wheter this book was actually written by Harper Lee. Some point to her deteriated state. Born in 1926, the 89-year old Pulitzer Prize winner is now deaf and blind and some critics feel that her guardians pushed for this book's release in order to exploit and extort from the beloved civil rights figure.Another source of controversy is how much Atticus Finch changed from being a champion of the lower class and people of color during the Depression to a dyed in the wool bigot at the height of the 1950s civil rights movement, particularly eyeing the NAACP as a threat to the way of life of Southern Whites. Such a change left not only only daughter Scout Finch disillusioned but many readers as well.I for one overlook this change in the Finch family patriarch. For one thing as I mentioned earlier, this book was a rough draft. Reports say that Lee put this book in a safe deposit box sometime between 1957 and 1960 and then forgot about it until her lawyers and accountants discovered it in 2014. In her elderly state, I doubt she made any changes to the original manuascript and it was published as-is.Another factor that may prove my theory right is Scout's recollection of Atticus' defense of a one-armed black man when she was a little girl. In this book, Tom Robinson was acquitted! Yet in Mockingbird, poor Tom was found guilty despite Atticus proving that Bob Ewell severely beat his daughter Mayella!With inconsistencies between the two novels, readers of this book will need to take it with a grain of salt. Don't read this book as a sequel as much as a return to some of the most beloved characters in 20th Century American literature. The scenes of Scout, Jem, and Dill are the best parts of this book (especially when the trio play Revival.)The rest of the book was quite interesting with Scout returning to her hometown of Maycomb in her 20s from living in the Big Apple for several years (though for the life of me, I have no idea what Jean Louise did for a living as it's not even mentioned.) However, Scout roams around the small town having debates about love, life, and equality while having those childhood flashbacks of her's with any and everyone she meets. Like the main character, this book lacks direction and jumps from place to place as well as points in time from Scout's childhood to becoming a young woman to the her previous return visits from up North.Even though this book is like a compass without a needle, Go Set A Watchman is going to become a classic if only for the fact that it's a lost work of the elusive Harper Lee who only wrote one other published book. Watchman is like when JRR Tolkien's son postumously published scores of the Middle Earth creator's notes and unfinished pieces on the Lord of the Rings trilogy- it gives glimpses of already established and much loved characters but it doesn't change the main body of work published by the author who I might add is a talented storyteller.Since this isn't an official sequel to 'To Kill A Mockingbird' you the reader have every right to accept the parts you enjoyed as canon and reject those you hated. So if you dislike that Atticus Finch becomes more like Archie Bunker when the NAACP comes to town, then you can just say 'That's not how that happened.' You won't be right or wrong. You'll be an observer from afar, watching life in the 1950s Solid South. You may be offended. You may be vindicated. But no matter what view you take, at least you'll be a little entertained when you do.

Harper Lee submitted this novel in 1957.It was rejected -- not because she was a poor writer, but because this was a flawed book.First, the flaws:1) The book is a series of short stories and speeches. It's not a parable (like To Kill a Mockingbird), but a sermon. As Robert McKee would say, it's "on the nose."2) Both the adult Scout and Atticus AGREE on things that we would find abhorrent today -- that blacks are in their infancy, and that the Supreme Court decision was badly rendered. Atticus leaves it at that, although Scout thinks it was wrongly done, but necessary anyway. The disturbing aspect of the book is that NEITHER side of the "conflict" has a different set of assumptions.3) Nothing is properly dramatized; it's just argued.4) The conclusion doesn't work -- but it contains a germ of an idea that became the triumph of Mockingbird.Now the strengths:1) The characters are real. They FEEL like real people, in all their ambiguities between goodness and bad. In this respect it is even better than Mockingbird, which has a too perfect Atticus.2) The flashbacks are outstanding writing. If I were an editor rejecting this book I would ask for ANOTHER book which focused on the child Scout instead of the adult -- which is precisely what happened.3) This book reflects the reality of Southern conflict in the 1950s. I've listed the shared assumptions of black inferiority as a weakness, but the truth is that this WAS indeed the mindset of that time. The problem is that the writer couldn't properly transcend those assumptions (a weakness) even though she stated them more clearly than I've ever seen in print (a strength).Is it canon?No. I had to think long and hard about this, because the characters really are the same characters. But this book was written BEFORE Mockingbird and rejected. Atticus was based on Harper Lee's father in the early 1950s -- who WAS at that time a segregationist. That book took one year to write.The multi-year REWRITE became Mockingbird -- not as a rewrite of that plot, but as a rewrite of those characters. In the interval between those two books, Harper Lee's father changed his mind about segregation. He began as the Atticus of Watchman and became the Atticus of Mockingbird.In order to properly be "canon", the Atticus from Mockingbird to Watchman has to work as a single individual in that timeline. Instead, his changed character reflected a real man (her actual father) in a timeline working in the opposite direction. The segregationist BECAME the Atticus we came to love. If read as canon, then the Atticus we came to love would have become the segregationist.That doesn't mean it cannot be read as "canon." Certainly the cognitive dissonance Scout experiences in the Citizen's Council becomes our own in reading the book. It seems like canon in that respect, and can certainly be read that way if one desired (that is, Atticus would be for separate [Watchman] but equal [Mockingbird]). But my take on canonicity is drawn from the fact that Atticus is a facsimile of Harper's own father, who grew between those novels -- from the father of Watchman into the father of Mockingbird.This book is required reading if you want to learn how to write and to be encouraged to do so. Watchman is clunky, awkward, with flashes of raw brilliance. It is a book that CANNOT be fixed, yet with characters that can be recreated into something marvelous.Harper Lee was rejected -- and overcame that rejection with a rewrite of those same characters in a different setting of a changed plot and a different presentation. From the sermon of Watchman came the parable of Mockingbird.And in each Lee ended the novel with the same thematic trick: to show that Scout HERSELF (and therefore the reader) has been bigoted the whole time.The entire point of bigotry is that we are unaware of it. It is the logical or emotional conclusion of our assumptions -- and until those assumptions themselves are exposed, the bigotry remains invisible. In the final pages of Watchman we realize that we are anti-Southern bigots. In the final pages of Mockingbird we realize that we are anti-Boo Radley bigots. Boo is no longer a stated value but a metaphor for ANYTHING or ANYONE we have wrongly feared.Mockingbird IS the final version of Watchman -- and therefore Watchman is not canon in that respect.But it IS essential reading for a writer who wants to rise from failure and rejection.First, read Mockingbird.Then, read Watchman.Finally, read Mockingbird again as the resurrection of characters from a flawed plot.If read in that way, this book could become infinitely meaningful -- not as a narrative of disillusion toward a character -- but rather as an example of resurrection as a writer.I could write better than Watchman.I will never write better than Mockingbird.Harper Lee spanned both extremes -- giving hope for the rest of us who would love to write, and have lacked the guts to keep doing so.

There’s been a lot of buzz about the controversies surrounding this book—regarding the timing and nature of its release, and the shocking reveals in the book itself, particularly the discovery that Atticus Finch, one of the most idolized characters in American literature, is a racist. Even though I pre-ordered the book, I worried that I’d risk ruining To Kill a Mockingbird for myself. However, when I received my copy on release day, I accepted that Go Set a Watchman was now in the hands of the public, for better or worse, and I decided I would make every effort to put aside all the controversies and read it on its own merits. To try and make of it anything more or less than what it is would be unfair to the author, in my opinion.And to my surprise, I ended up really liking Go Set a Watchman. I just started reading it a second time, in fact, the better to appreciate it.In the hope that I might help another reader decide whether or not to crack open this book, here are some of the things I kept in mind while reading:• In his review for The Guardian, Mark Lawson says, “The first problem in assessing Harper Lee’s first published novel in the five and a half decades since To Kill a Mockingbird is whether to describe it as her first or second book. … Chronologically, Go Set a Watchman is, in Hollywood arithmetic, a sort of Mockingbird 2, depicting the later lives of the Finch family … However, in computing terms, Watchman is Mockingbird 1.0 to the Mockingbird 2.0 of the novel that was previously the 89-year-old Lee’s single published work.” I decided to take the Mockingbird 1.0 view.• I thought of Watchman as a fascinating artifact from a parallel universe: What if Harper Lee’s editors had chosen to work with this draft—polish it up, revise the structure and pacing, but retain the basic storyline—instead of urging Lee to do a complete rewrite, which eventually became To Kill a Mockingbird?• The Bible verse the title is taken from sets the theme of the book. Isaiah 21:6 (KJV) says, “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.” This isn’t very telling, but it came together for me in verse 9: “And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.” It did help to find out ahead of time that Atticus is revealed as a racist, because it certainly was a shock. Reading this passage from Isaiah also helped. I understood immediately that Babylon for Jean Louise (Scout) Finch is her beloved Maycomb, and the “graven images,” or idols, are the godly pedestals upon which she put all her loved ones, particularly her father Atticus and her childhood friend Hank.And here are the merits I appreciated in Go Set a Watchman:• This is not just a story about Jean Louise uncovering her beloved Atticus as a flawed human being; more broadly, this is a story about a young woman experiencing the painful but necessary transition of becoming her own person. I really identified with this aspect of Watchman.• The overall tone of Watchman, perhaps heavy-handed at times but no less truthful, is the old adage, “You can never go home again.” Before the big reveal about Atticus’ racist views, Jean Louise realizes upon coming home from New York for a visit that her gilt-edged childhood memories of Maycomb do not match up to what greets her in the present. One of my favorite passages is a conversation about Jean Louise’s discovery that a favorite haunt, Finch’s Landing, no longer belongs to her family but has been sold off to a hunting club. Childhood friend Hank teases Jean Louise about her disappointment: “I believe you are the worst of the lot. Mr. Finch is seventy-two years young and you’re a hundred years old when it comes to something like this.” To which Jean Louise replies: “I just don’t like my world disturbed without some warning.”• Although there is a lot of alienation and pain in this story, there are also many delightful moments in which Lee reveals a fondness for the South in which she grew up. Another favorite passage of mine is when Jean Louise returns to an ice cream shop after recognizing its owner as Mr. Cunningham: “She was sitting at a table behind Mr. Cunningham’s ice cream shop, eating from a wax-paper container. Mr. Cunningham, a man of uncompromising rectitude, had given her a pint free of charge for having guessed his name yesterday, one of the tiny things she adored about Maycomb: people remembered their promises.” I love details like this, and as a Southerner I also enjoyed Lee’s vivid sketches of the Maycomb people, which rang true to me.• Watchman contains some heartwarming flashbacks with Jem, Dill, and Calpurnia, as well as a couple of telling scenes about Jean Louise’s early friendship with Hank. Yes, the flashbacks are a bit jarring to the flow and pacing, but recognizing that Watchman is not a fully polished final draft, I still treasured these scenes as precious insights into beloved characters I never imagined I’d be able to read in my lifetime.• As Michiko Kakutani points out in her review for The New York Times, “One of the emotional through-lines in both ‘Mockingbird’ and ‘Watchman’ is a plea for empathy … The difference is that ‘Mockingbird’ suggested that we should have compassion for outsiders like Boo and Tom Robinson, while ‘Watchman’ asks us to have understanding for a bigot named Atticus.” What I got from reading Watchman is that while Atticus is still Atticus in many of the ways readers have adored him for decades, he is very much a flawed, prejudiced human being. Watchman does not in any way excuse Atticus’ racist views toward African-Americans, but it does encourage the reader, along with Jean Louise, to take Mr. Finch down from the godly pedestal and understand him as a mortal. I believe Lee is also urging readers to look inside ourselves and realize we all harbor prejudices of some kind.

I'm sure that by now, we've all heard the story of Go Set a Watchman.There was talk of a "sequel" to Harper Lee's beloved classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the word about town was that it was to be published (possibly) against Harper Lee's will. That her current caretaker was taking advantage of an older lady, and was causing her nothing but grief.Before the book was even published, there was an ongoing hum all across the literary world about this book, and the controversy it was destined to carry.Many of my friends told me they would not read it. No way, no how. They couldn't support a book that possibly could have been published under such questionable circumstances.Once the book started circulating around reviewers, readers became more turned off by talk of "Atticus Finch not being the man we all came to love." I won't specify exactly what the problem was, but fans were in an uproar about one of their favorite characters in literary history showing up in a different, and less lovable, light.Fast-forward a bit more to talk of Go Set a Watchman not being a sequel per se, but a rough copy and outline of what To Kill a Mockingbird was supposed to be. With the way it was skewered by its audience, if Go Set a Watchman was published back in the 1960s instead of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee would possibly not be the icon she is today. Actually, who knows. Perhaps everyone's expectations were too high when they heard that a "To Kill a Mockingbird sequel was coming out!" Perhaps fans of the original story judged the book before they even got their hands on it. Perhaps too many people across the world were the ones that turned this story into a flop, not the author herself.But I digress...I battled with it myself for a while. Do I want to read this book, and possibly sully my opinion of Scout, Atticus, and Harper Lee? Do I want to read it and see what happens, just out of curiosity? Do I want to pretend it doesn't exist and hug my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird close to my chest, shut my eyes, and pretend that the world is beautiful place where no bad sequels exist?In the end, I figured that it was important I read the book, and form an honest, unbiased opinion of my own. I wasn't going to allow word through the grapevine to hinder my opinion of a book most folks haven't even bothered to read.I was going in.Now let's go back, 30 years later from where we last visited Scout...And that's as far as I'm going, folks. If you're curious about what happens in Go Set a Watchman, I implore you to actually read it. Why?Because. I. Loved. It.I fell so hard for this book, it completely made me change the way I view To Kill a Mockingbird, FOR THE BETTER. I can't guarantee that every reader will have the same marvelous reading experience that I had, but you most certainly will not know unless you try.I prepared myself for awful writing, a weak plot line, and for my beloved characters to turn into hideous, child-feasting monsters, but that didn't happen.What did happen? Harper Lee's characters came to life.No longer was Atticus Finch a man from the 1930s who was too good to be true. He has now become human.No longer was Scout a wide-eyed little girl, just learning about the cruelties of the world. She has now become a woman, wise and powerful beyond her years, and won't stand for anything unsavory.No longer was Maycomb County the County you knew when you first picked up To Kill a Mockingbird. Maycomb County is now an entity you would see through the eyes of a grown up Scout.Go Set a Watchman made To Kill a Mockingbird real. Go Set a Watchman is the other half of the story I didn't know I needed in my life until now. It packs such a powerful punch, I felt breathless when I finished the last page. Then cue wracking sobs that coursed through my body for the next two hours.I don't know what the critics of this book found when they opened it up...I don't know what readers read that turned them off so, but I'm glad I didn't have that experience. I'm glad I was able to go into this book with an open heart, and an open mind, and take something beautiful and meaningful from it. (And in my opinion, some of the negatives that were taken from this book wouldn't have been negatives at all if the critics actually finished the book.)In my opinion, this book was cursed from the very beginning. It didn't have a chance.As I said, not everyone will have this experience. You may read this review, pick up the book, and curse me for misleading you. (There's honestly nothing I can do about that!) But this is what I took from Go Set a Watchman, and I regret nothing. Absolutely nothing.Go Set a Watchman was everything I could have wanted (and much, much more) in a "sequel," "rough draft," or whatever you want to call it. I am fully aware that I am currently, and possibly will forever be, in the small percentage of people who actually like or even love this book, and I've come to terms with it. It's not the first time one of my favorite books has been raked over the coals.This book left an impression on my soul, and I will hold it close to my heart wherever I go.So, readers, I implore you. Please read a book before you carve your opinion of it in stone. No good will ever come of that. If I had listened to all of the negative gossip and reviews of this book, I never would have had the extraordinary reading experience I just had. So please, think before you read.

Almost everyone knows how Go Set a Watchman got published -- Lee is now infirm and rumored to no longer be of sound mind. Her lawyer "discovered" this lost manuscript. In fact Watchman was a first draft of the novel that was sent to editor Tay Hohoff in 1957. Hohoff rejected the manuscript and suggested many changes and eventually all those changes and rewrites became To Kill a Mockingbird. Watchman is not a sequel to Mockingbird. It is not an alternate version. It's a first draft, and one can argue about the ethics about publishing it altogether -- would Beethoven have wanted his initial scribblings of his symphonies published and played by orchestras?The revelation that Harper Lee's "long-lost" novel Go Set A Watchman gave the sainted Atticus Finch a "dark side" made the front pages of the New York Times for days and caused the predictable teeth-gnashing that one of the most beloved literary characters's reputation is somehow ... tarnished? Atticus in this book is not the same Atticus who defended an innocent black man and urged his children to be kind and unprejudiced. He's an infirm man who is vehemently against the NAACP and is outraged at the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. He's even joined the "Maycomb Citizens' Council," a club that's dedicated to preserving, well, the Southern way of life.I sat and read Go Set a Watchman and if there's any literary character assassination, it's not really Atticus. Atticus in Watchman is so distantly drawn, so opaque of a figure, that one can easily just forget about him as soon as the book is over. The real disappointment, one that's harder to shake, is that the "Jean Louise Finch" of Watchman is NOTHING like "Scout Finch" of To Kill A Mockingbird. Mockingbird's Scout was a precocious, intelligent child. Watchman's Jean Louise Finch plays like a clichéd heroine from a young adult novel, and an annoying one at that.When one reads Watchman the first thing that jumps out on the page is how thinly sketched every character is compared to the richly drawn Southern gothic counterparts in Mockingbird. "Jean Louise Finch" is a whiny, over-dramatic twenty-something year old and most of her storyline is dominated by a romance with Henry Clinton, a lawyer in Atticus's firm. She's 26, lives in New York, comes back home to Maycomb, Alabama, and discovers to her shock that Atticus is not perfect, Henry is prejudiced as well, Calpurnia no longer really recognizes her and Aunt Alexandra is still very, very annoying. The end. Oh, Jem is dead.Remember how Scout was a tomboy, who was also really smart and capable? Well here's Jean-Louise: "Although she was a respectable driver, she hated to operate anything mechanical more complicated than a safety pin: folding lawn chairs were a source of profound irritation to her; she had never learned to ride a bicycle or use a typewriter; she fished with a pole."To get a flavor of the of the love interest in this novel, here's an excruciating passage with Henry:"I don't even love you like that anymore. I've hurt you but there it is." Yes, it was she talking, with her customary aplomb, breaking his heart in a drugstore. Well, he'd broken hers.Henry's face became blank, reddened, and its scar leaped into prominence. "Jean Louise, you can't mean what you're saying.""I mean every word of it."Hurts, doesn't it? You're damn right it hurts. You know how it feels, now.Jean-Louise is outraged that her father and Henry have joined the Maycomb Citizens' Council but in the climax of the book she has an argument with Atticus which reveals that she's as bigoted as Atticus, if not worse. She also says that she was "furious" about the Brown vs. Board of Education decision because "they" were "tellin' us what to do again." She also agrees that the "Negro" population is "backward" and "unable to share the fully in the responsibilities of citizenship." In fact, her only defense of Brown is "Atticus, if you believe all that, then why don't you do right? I mean this, no matter how hateful the Court was, there had to be a beginning."The protracted argument with Atticus stems not from any disagreement with Atticus over the basic philosophy behind segregation but from Jean-Louise's fury that Atticus had brought her up believing all the things about fairness and colorblindness and now he's backtracking. In other words, like many of the millenials of today who post 100 selfies a day with hasthags like #lookingood and #nomakeup, it's all about me. But let's examine some of Lee's "wonderful" prose here:"Atticus, I'm throwing it at you and I'm gonna grind it in: you better go warn your younger friends that if they want to preserve Our Way of Life, it begins at home. It doesn't begin with the schools or the churches or anyplace at home. Tell 'em that, and use your blind, immoral, misguided, n___r-lovin' daughter as your example. Go in front of me with a bell and say, 'Unclean!' ... Point me out as your mistake. Point me out: Jean Louise Finch, who was exposed to all kinds of guff from the white trash she went to school with, but she might never have gone to school for all the influence it had on her. Everything that was Gospel to her she got at home from her father. You sowed the seeds in me, Atticus, and now it's coming home to you --"This is awful writing. But it only gets worse: after the blow-up with Atticus Jean Louise talks to her uncle "Dr. Finch" who tells her: "You're color blind. You always have been, you always will be. The only differences you see are between one human and another are differences in looks and intelligence and character and the like. You've never been prodded to look at people as a race, and now that race is the burning issue of the day, you're still unable to think racially. You see only people." Jean-Louise's response to that might the one (unintentionally) hilarious moment in this novel: "But Uncle Jack, I don't especially want to run out and marry a Negro or something." If this is Lee's version of racial enlightenment ...There's not a single character in Watchman that one wants to "follow" to the next page. Part of a writers' job is writing about characters that the reader cares about. Not good characters, not moral characters, not racially enlightened characters, but characters that attract interest and attention. Watchman is entirely devoid of any such characters, and thus any interest. You read it for the novelty factor and that's it.There are a couple things in Watchman that remind me of Mockingbird, but unfortunately they don't speak very well of Lee as a writer. You remember how in Mockingbird Harper Lee had this habit of introducing every character with a long expository history, instead of simply letting the character come alive by himself on the page? That habit is here in Watchman, except there's no colorful lines to make those expository character introductions more interesting. You remember how sometimes huge confrontations in Mockingbird were tidied up with a neat homily, like "You never really understand a person until you see things from his point of view"? Well, you see traces of that in Watchman. But without confrontations that hold any meaning, those neat homilies become even more irritating.It's interesting, then, to see that among all this trash, Hohoff rescued parts of Watchman that turned into Mockingbird. The "Tom Robinson" storyline in Mockingbird is drawn from a one paragraph description in Watchman about how Atticus once defended an unnamed black teen in a statutory rape case and won. In Watchman the story is told in such an impersonal, brief way that blink and you might miss it. The character of "Dill" is also taken from a brief passage about Scout's school days. "Aunt Alexandra" in Watchman is an insufferable and bigoted, but somehow Hohoff managed to make Lee rewrite her into a woman with a similar character, but enough pathos that she becomes a recognizable figure in the Southern gothic genre: the proud, lonely belle. Jean Louise's close relationship with Calpurnia as a child is also present in Watchman, except in a far more mundane storyline: Calpurnia talked Jean-Louise out of a phantom pregnancy scare.Other things one just has to assume were created by the author mining her imagination. Who knows where the Boo Radley story came from? It's not anywhere in Watchman. It became the heart of Mockingbird. Why is the relationship between Jem and Jean-Louise remembered as so cold and distant in Watchman, when it was warm and close in Mockingbird? How about Tom and Mayella Ewell? Sheriff Tate? These richly drawn characters are again missing in Mockingbird.I think most people who read To Kill a Mockingbird assumed that Scout was really Harper Lee, and Harper Lee was Scout. The novel is semi-autobiographical, and Lee worked many elements of her childhood and upbringing into the novel. Scout Finch's sharp observations, her love for her family and community, her integrity and moral compass -- I think most readers assumed that these were really the qualities of Harper Lee. The fact that Lee has led a reclusive life since the book's publication in 1960 has only added to the mystique. Harper Lee never crashed and burned the way her childhood friend Truman Capote (Dill in Mockingbird) did. It's like she wrote the book, and closed the curtain on her life permanently.Watchman is so poorly written, so devoid of anything that might even suggest the embryonic stages of a literary classic, that I started to wonder if that old rumor that Truman Capote had a heavy invisible hand in the writing of Mockingbird was correct. What's more, it made me think, is this Jean-Louise" Finch really Harper Lee? If these were her first thoughts about herself, then either she didn't give herself enough credit or Lee later created a Scout Finch that was less true to life but more appealing to readers.But all these debates about the ethics of publishing Watchman, who really were the invisible hands that shaped Mockingbird, how much of Harper Lee was put into both novels, is really a moot point at the end of the day. The fact is To Kill a Mockingbird is not a perfect book, but it's a book worth reading because it's well-written, interesting, and imaginative. In other words, a classic. Go Set a Watchman is none of those things.

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Another thilling adventure, loved it! Finally a Worth Reading continuation of an emotional and mature story! I highly recommend it!

Ich habe im Vorfeld einige Rezensionen online und in Zeitungen gelesen und bin verwundert, da ich diese oft nicht nachvollziehen kann."Atticus Finch besucht ein Ku-Klux-Klan-Meeting und hetzt über "Neger": US-Schriftstellerin Harper Lee zeigt in ihrem neuen Roman schockierende Züge ihres einstigen Helden." schreibt z.B. die Süddeutsche Zeitung. Ich weiß nicht, welches Buch da gelesen wurde. In dem Buch 'Go Set a Watchman' findet sich da nichts davon. Das angesprochene Meeting ist nicht vom Ku-Klux-Klan und Atticus hetzt nicht gegen "Neger", er widerspricht der Hetze nur nicht. Er ist auch in 'To kill a mockingbird' kein Exempel für Zivilcourage oder ein 'Negerfreund', wie er von seinen Mitmenschen bezeichnet wird. Er ist Anwalt und Vater und versucht sich selbst treu zu bleiben. Das tut er in 'Go Set a Watchman' auch und nur seine Tochter und einige Rezensenten sehen das anders.Aber ist das bei der Beurteilung eines Buches überhaupt die Frage, wie einem die Figurenentwicklung persönlich gefällt? Gibt es bei einer Rezension nicht andere Maßstäbe? Nein? Gut, dann stelle ich fest, dass sich Atticus Finch in den 20 Jahren etwas verändert hat, aber das ist bei so einem Zeitraum auch normal. Die sechsjährige Scott hatte in ihrer Ich-Erzählung das Bild, das viele Kinder von ihren Eltern haben. Atticus war aus ihrer Sicht fehlerlos. Es ist naiv, wenn man das Bild des kleinen Mädchens für die Realität hält. Als 26-jährige kehrt sie zurück in ihre Heimatstadt und reibt sich an den Unterschieden zwischen New York und den Kleinstadt in Alabama. Sie ist irritiert, dass ihr Bild von den dort lebenden Menschen und insbesondere ihres Vaters einer Revision bedarf. DAS ist das Thema des Buches und es durchzieht das Werk von der ersten bis zur letzten Seite. Es gelingt Harper Lee ein Portrait einer jungen Frau in der Mitte des letzten Jahrhunderts zu zeichnen, das von der ersten bis zur letzten Seite überzeugt. Ich habe das Buch mit großer Freude genossen. Rein persönlich hat es mir sogar etwas besser gefallen als das vielgelobte "To kill a mockingbird", da die Geschichte in einem Guss erzählt ist und die Rückschauen nicht neben der Rahmenhandlung stehen, sondern sich in die Geschichte nahtlos einfügen.

It seems almost superfluous to write a review of this book as so much has already been written about it but here I go anyway.According to reports this was a novel Harper Lee wrote in the 1950s and couldn't get published. An editor suggested she set it much earlier in the heroine Scout's childhood and make more of the courtroom battle of her father Atticus Finch in his bid to acquit a black man of rape of a white woman. The second book became of course To Kill A Mockingbird. Go Set a Watchman is therefore a kind of prequel though it does stand alone and can be read without any knowledge of the later book. Supposedly Harper Lee wanted this book to be rel eased as it was unedited. This has caused some reviewers to refer to it as a rough draft but I don't feel this at all. It is a completed work though with a completely different tone to To Kill a Mockingbird. It is a period piece and the use of the word negro and the references to poor white people throughout as trash was quite jarring to me. In one phrase Lee refers to "the smell of clean negro". Some characters use the n-word. However, such dated language is found in many old books and one just has to accept it as part of the time.The book opens with Scout, now a twenty-six year old woman returning home to Alabama after a stint working in New York. It starts out almost as a love story as she toys with accepting a marriage proposal from a childhood sweetheart. As the book unfolds the plot really turns on her relationship with her father. As a child she worshipped him as a godlike figure but as an adult she becomes aware of his flaws. She becomes horrified to learn that he has racist views like most of his contemporaries. He sees black people like children and doesn't think they are ready to vote, hold professional positions or run their own affairs. This flawed Atticus has been the subject of much furore in the press.The book seems then to be a coming of age novel. Scout sees her father as he really is, not as she thought he was as a child and she sees her home town and its inhabitants as they really are, familiar to her and yet also alien. I felt a strong kinship with the main character as anyone will who has left home and then returned to see their roots differently. She fits and yet she doesn't fit. She is the Watchman of the town, observing it and trying to be its conscience. She is stunned by her father's racism, his opposition to NAACP, his one time attendance at a Klan meeting. As the book develops she manages to reconcile with her father through the advice of her eccentric uncle.There is much to enjoy in this book. The atmosphere of the rural South is caught beautifully and the flashbacks to childhood are exquisite. Scout has a carefree rural childhood, barefoot in the dirt, skinny-dipping in the creek, drinking lemonade and ice cream on endless sultry summer afternoons; truly a childhood we wished we had all had but few of us did. I love books set in the Southern states even though I have never been there.Lovers of To Kill a Mockingbird may not like this book so much. It is not simple, not black and white, not a children's book. Everyone is flawed just as in life. Everything is shades of grey. Life does not have simple solutions and nobody is coming to save the day at the last moment. These are hard truths which few wish to hear but if you are willing to put the schoolroom edicts behind you this is a very adult, very beautiful book.

Great read, takes you back in time to a small southern town struggling with desegregation. They love there life style and feel threatened by change.If you agree with desegregation you will be shunned by your own.Not really any input in this book from the black perspective but an excellent description of southern attitudes of the time. Who is the watchman a book club question.