All I could tell you about this book prior to having read it was that it was about racial justice, and was written from the perspective of a girl whose father, Atticus Finch, is one of the most beloved characters in American literature.
I’ve seen the movie. Watched it in college some twenty years ago. And while I remember loving the movie, I don’t remember much about it beyond that.
Unsurprisingly, the book is pretty damn good. As is the case with many of the classics I’ve read for the first time over the last several years, there’s a reason To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic. Also unsurprisingly, I don’t really know what the hell I can say about it. It’s been a canonical work for 60 years, and has been dissected by most high school kids. There probably isn’t a thought about this book that hasn’t been shared by hundreds – if not thousands – of people.
It’s good. If you haven’t read it yet, you really are missing out.
I will say, though, that I didn’t really enjoy reading about a 9 year old girl. Like, I wouldn’t seek out a book that was presented as being about that. It surprised me how much of this book had nothing to do with with racial justice and the trial of Tom Robinson. This book is about so much more than that, and it’s all kind of under the surface. Superficially, this book is about a girl, Jean Louise (Scout), and her brother, Jeremy (Jem) doing kid things in the mid-1930s. Their father is a respected lawyer, and they have a black cook, Calpurnia. Scout gets into fights, and goes to school, and observes the town around her. She’s aware of racial and class divisions in the community, even if she doesn’t really understand them.
There’s a lot of that can be dissected, here, and I think this is the kind of book you can read over and over again without being bored by it. It was absolutely masterfully done.
And I have no desire to read Go Set a Watchmen. From what I understand, that book is almost an early draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, and after being rejected by the publisher, Harper Lee reworked the story from Scout’s perspective, and it eventually became this. Nearing the end of her life, following the death of her sister, her lawyer published Go Set a Watchmen under questionable circumstances.
If that’s all pretty close to true, I don’t think it’s a book Lee ever intended other people to read. She had her whole life to publish it, were that not the case. That she didn’t is meaningful, I think.
And it doesn’t help that many seemed disappointed after reading it.