Friday, August 28, 2015

Book Thoughts: Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

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Go Set A Watchman is the sequel to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (you can read my review of To Go Kill a Mockingbird here). It is a short read, at fewer than 300 pages. This book takes place about 20 years after To Kill a Mockingbird, set in Maycomb, Alabama. Scout, the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird returns home from New York during vacation and observes the changes that have taken place within Maycomb, and how Maycomb differs from New York.

Scout returns home to see her father, Atticus, aunt Alexandria and kind-of beau/perhaps future fiancĂ©, Hank. Apparently, Scout and her brother Jem grew up with Hank and were close friends. I don’t recall Hank from To Kill a Mockingbird so it is strange that they were such close friends but Hank was never mentioned… Anyway, Scout catches Atticus and Hank at a citizen’s council meeting that espouses deeply racist thoughts. I don’t want to go into too much detail in case you want to read the book, but this event calls into question everything Scout thought she knew about her father, Hank and Maycomb as a town. Scout seeks counsel from her Uncle Jack and ultimately confronts Hank and Atticus. The narration focuses on the tensions between the North and the South in regards to race relations and states’ rights and the high racial tensions between White and Black residents of Maycomb.

I’ll be honest, I did not enjoy this book. The continuity between this book and To Kill a Mockingbird was off (e.g., there is no mention of Hank in To Kill a…) and it was full of pointless flashbacks (e.g., playtime to set up the relationship that supposedly existed between Scout, Jem and Hank). A lot of the storytelling felt forced or out of place. The book did not do enough to set up events or delve deeply into racial tensions that were growing during the Civil Rights Movement. I don’t think you’ll be missing anything if you skip Go Set A Watchman.


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