Go Set a Watchman: Harper Lee's sensational lost novel
As seen:
By Harper Lee
avg rating
2 reviews
A landmark new novel from Harper Lee, set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird.
Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch – ‘Scout’ – returns home from New York City to visit her ageing 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 be guided only by one’s own conscience.
Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humour and effortless precision – a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context and new meaning to a classic.
TweetReviews
I read 'go set a watchman' as I had already read 'To kill a mockingbird'. I was a little disappointed with the lack of plot. I held Atticus in high regard before reading this.
Mixed feelings about this one. Wouldn't want to have read it as a stand alone novel but reading it immediately after To Kill A Mockingbird made it really interesting for all kinds of reasons and I'd quite like to do that with a book group and discuss them both together. In this one, Scout is all grown up so the discussions about racial politics in the Southern United States have lost the innocent edge that 8 year old Scout brought to Mockingbird. This made the reading much more uncomfortable and at times quite unpalatable especially in the final parts.
Having said that, it was interesting to meet everybody from Mockingbird again and see how they all turned out - or even how they really are now that Scout can see with adult eyes.
