From the Bookshelf of Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge…

Go Set a Watchman

Harper Lee

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2016 Challenge prompts

A book with a protagonist who has your occupation...
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last updated Jan 27, 2017 08:22AM

The first book you see in a bookstore
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last updated Dec 29, 2016 04:24PM

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What Members Thought

Aug 07, 2015 Graceann rated it liked it

So, I hear back in whenever it was that a "new" novel from Harper Lee is going to be released. I immediately pre-order it. Then I start hearing rumors regarding her ability to approve such a project and the suspicion that her affairs may be mishandled is floating about. I start to be concerned, but I still want to read the book and draw my own conclusions.

Well, now I've read it. My adoration of To Kill a Mockingbird, and Harper Lee, remains undiminished. TKAM quite literally changed my young li So, I hear back in whenever it was that a "new" novel from Harper Lee is going to be released. I immediately pre-order it. Then I start hearing rumors regarding her ability to approve such a project and the suspicion that her affairs may be mishandled is floating about. I start to be concerned, but I still want to read the book and draw my own conclusions.

Well, now I've read it. My adoration of To Kill a Mockingbird, and Harper Lee, remains undiminished. TKAM quite literally changed my young life. I learned so much from it. I learned that a fight you're bound to lose is still worth fighting if the issue is big enough. I learned that, in the eyes of a little girl, her daddy is a god, and if her daddy is a decent man, that's a good thing.

I think the release of Go Set a Watchman does two things. First, it shows the glimmer of the talent that would be displayed in full in To Kill a Mockingbird. Secondly, it demonstrates just what a treasure a truly good editor is. Tay Hohoff was brilliant, and the lack of her collaboration is glaringly obvious here.

After TKAM came out, Ms. Hohoff contacted Ms. Lee several times, saying "isn't it time that Mockingbird had a sibling?" Now, if Watchman came first, and planted the seed that became Mockingbird, Hohoff would have seen it. If it had been good enough to be published, even with the polishing it obviously needed, she would have suggested, maybe even insisted, that it be used as the foundation. She didn't, or if she did, Harper Lee resisted, or else it would have happened back in the early 1960s, but it didn't. This suggests to me that one or both of them determined that this book was not ready, or good enough, to be released back then. Ms. Hohoff passed away many years ago, but Harper Lee is still with us, and has been sharp as a tack either up until a few years ago, or up until this very moment, depending on where you get your information.

I get the main thrust of Watchman. These are southern people of their time, Scout does not share their prejudices, and feels rage against the discovery that her god of a daddy is just a man, after all. Those who read this and only get "Atticus is a racist" are not only incorrect but missing the point of the story. The point is that good and right-minded people sometimes have to engage in hypocrisy in order to get along, and that the South needs people like her to plant little seedlings of dissent among the White noise. What is happening here is that Scout is no longer seeing her father through the eyes of a child, and she is becoming her own woman, with ideas separate from those of the previous generation.

Is the story handled with the subtle grace and simple beauty of that in To Kill a Mockingbird? No. Not even close. Could the stewardship of Tay Hohoff, working in collaboration with Harper Lee, have made that happen? Not only possible, but likely. At the very least, she would have corrected the continuity error of stating that Atticus got an acquittal for the man whose trial forms the focal point for TKAM. But since, for whatever reason, neither of them determined to polish and release this 50 years ago, we'll never know what it might have been if its rough edges had been smoothed and its glimmers of genius nurtured into bonfires. As Watchman stands, it is an interesting glimpse into the growth process of an author. ...more

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Feb 28, 2016 jess added it

Shelves: fiction, audiobook-d, 2016

I picked this up randomly because I was in desperate need of an audio book and it was checked in. And it was read by Reese Witherspoon. Oh, whatever.

It's not really a great book. It feels so much like a first draft, like it was propelled with great force from a brain but not greatly revised.

Jean Louise is a very different sort of person from the Scout I knew in Mockingbird. And, frankly, so is Atticus. It was a weird experience. ...more

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Dec 01, 2015 Theresa rated it liked it

Nothing to get excited about. If I didn't know it was by Harper Lee, I wouldn't have guessed. Completely different writing style from TKAM, and the language sounded much more modern. The characters in this books weren't that interesting, and honestly, this book was a disappointment. TKAM is my favorite book, and I loved the characters in it. This one, not so much. ...more

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Aug 02, 2015 Gabrielle S rated it really liked it

So this review needs to come with a disclaimer: I have not finished To Kill a Mockingbird. I am however familiar with the plot.

This means that I am not comparing this book to TKAM. This is the return home of Jean Louise at the age of 26 and her realization that her father, Atticus Finch, is not a god but a mere mortal like the rest of us.

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Aug 07, 2015 Kevin rated it did not like it

After slogging through 100 pages before reaching the first major (potential) plot point, which subsequently was developed only through a tortured hand-wringing philosophical analysis of what comprises racism and what does not, I was left completely non-plussed. I can't imagine that the rumors are true of this being Harper Lee's original manuscript and her editor/publisher read it and asked instead for the backstory on the characters contained within. I would think that this manuscript from an un ...more

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Jan 30, 2016 Isabel Jazmín rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Cuando supe que existía una especie de continuación de "Matar a un ruiseñor" me dio mucha curiosidad por ver qué había sido de los personajes, así que en cuanto lo terminé, me puse a leer este y en los primeros capítulos tuve sentimientos encontrados (la mayor parte negativos) pero luego entendí mejor el desarrollo y ya ya para el final estuve más conforme con la historia. ...more

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