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Go Set a Watchman
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Go Set a Watchman (To Kill a Mockingbird, #2) - May 2016
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I read it already too. The beginning of the book read like a hideous romance novel and I struggled. I hated this part so much. At least no one will claim Truman Capote wrote this one! Partway through the book, we discover what feels like a change to a most beloved character in To Kill a Mockingbird. I found myself a bit outraged by the behavior of this character as well as some other people within the story - it seemed so out of character. I didn't want to believe that this new information was within what I had learned about their characters in To Kill a Mockingbird. Scout had the same reaction. And I imagine this was what Harper Lee herself experienced when she returned from New York to Alabama. I was disappointed to discover that everything in Scout's childhood was not as she had previously perceived it as a child. So in a sense, I "grew up" with Scout, and I didn't really want to do that. That made the book important for me to read.
However, the writing doesn't reach the caliber of To Kill a Mockingbird for me. With a tighter ending and a bit more fleshing out of what people believed and why, and a little less of the beginning story, it would have been a much better book, in my opinion. I gave it 3.5 stars, and then decided to be kind and round up to 4 stars.
I read this earlier too with the first book. I remember liking both but this even better. I think mostly because it shows how hard it is to draw line, things are so complicated and it is not so easy to say how to do and what is right. And all how much our opnions are also about how people/society around us think and changing others mind is not that easy. You know, kind of "Don't judge me until you know me and live in my life!" stuff. But I guess if I would have read book younger I'd probably felt this different, at least depending how people seem to react this book. I didn't find family that interesting in at the beginning so change wasn't that big for me.
I just started this yesterday. So, I'm not ready to judge yet. So far, I'm just being re-introduced to the dramatis personae.
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Go Set a Watchman (other topics)To Kill a Mockingbird (other topics)
From Harper Lee comes a landmark new novel 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 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 a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past--a journey that can be guided only by one's 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, humor 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 an American classic.