Book Review: Go Set a Watchman

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HANDOUT IMAGE – Cover of Harper Lee’s new book ‘Go Set A Watchman’

A few weeks ago Go Set a Watchman, a much-anticipated companion novel to Harper Lee’s 1960 classic To Kill a Mockingbird was released. This new book was actually written before To Kill a Mockingbird. However, it was never published and the manuscript remained unfound in a box for over fifty years. The book’s publication has been controversial; Harper Lee had been very vocal in the past about her intentions to not publish anything else again. In recent years, though, evidence has suggested that Lee may be suffering from dementia, and the book may be being published without her truly knowing what is happening in a grab for money by her lawyers and publishing company. Despite the book’s questionable publication, Go Set a Watchman has been an immense success, selling a million copies in just the first week.

The story follows that of Jean Louise Finch, also known as Scout, who many will recognize as the child heroine of To Kill a Mockingbird. In Go Set a Watchman, the year is 1953. Jean Louise is now twenty-six and lives in New York City. Every so often, she comes down back to her hometown of Maycomb, Alabama, to visit her family and sweetheart. The book describes one of those visits home, in which Jean Louise learns more about her family and friends than she ever did before during a time of heated race relations in the turbulent ‘50s. She is forced to face uncomfortable truths, both about the people she’s known her whole life and herself.

Readers of Go Set a Watchman will be able to recognize Harper Lee’s distinctive writing style from the very first page. Indeed, some descriptive passages of the text are precisely the same as those in To Kill a Mockingbird. Yet it is important for the reader to keep in mind that this book is not exactly a finished novel. It is a manuscript that never underwent any serious editing, as To Kill a Mockingbird did.

The stories are vastly different. The characters all have the same names, but their behaviors are often so very removed from the To Kill a Mockingbird characters we know and love that it is hardly fair to say they are really the same characters at all. Important plot details of the 1960 classic are overturned or barely mentioned in this new book; old characters have been tossed out and new ones brought abruptly in. Both stories may have had the same basis, but the finished products as presented to the public are vastly different. If you expect everything in Go Set a Watchman to perfectly match up with the events of To Kill a Mockingbird, you will surely be disappointed. But if you read the novel and accept it as its own story, not associating it with the book published fifty-five years ago, you may be in for an interesting new read examining race relations and family relationships in the mid-century South. In summary, readers must beware of their hopes for a direct sequel being torn down, but should rather try to appreciate the novel on its own.

Have you read the book? Do you have an opinion on the controversy? Leave a comment below!