Even if all “Go Set a Watchman” does is to simply remind us of what it was like to experience those feelings, from a book, it will succeed.
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“Since Atlanta, she had looked out the dining-car window with a delight nearly physical“.
Fans of “To Kill a Mockingbird” will have read about three-quarters of the first chapter of Harper Lee’s hotly anticipated second novel before their stomachs drop. In the statement that accompanied the announcement of Watchman’s publication, Lee says, “In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called Go Set a Watchman“. In the gorgeous opening chapter of Go Set a Watchman, she is travelling home to visit her father in Maycomb, Alabama. Indeed, the first glimpse at the book’s contents indicated that all those who’ve been eagerly awaiting the follow-up to American classic To Kill a Mockingbird will have a mixed blessing on their hands, as a major Mockingbird character will not be a part of the action. “Henry had always respected Atticus Finch; soon it melded to affection and Henry regarded him as a father”, an excerpt read. (He didn’t make the cut in Mockingbird, no big loss.) Henry, a World War II vet, pops the question 10 pages in, but Jean Louise, as independent and rebellious as ever, doesn’t think she’s in love. Perhaps that’s the seed of the chapter’s buoying joy, which with each mile marker only seems to grow.
Readers had to wait 55 years for Lee to okay the publication of her second novel, which has some nervous. Will it distort the image we have of these characters who have lived in our heads all these splendid years? “It’s a book written by a young woman set in her own times, quite unlike To Kill a Mockingbird, which casts itself back”. News of the “Mockingbird” sequel broke in February after Tonja Carter, Lee’s lawyer, discovered the manuscript past year and negotiated with HarperCollins to publish the book. With its youthful narrator and its straightforward take on prejudice and racial injustice, “Mockingbird” is frequently taught in schools – but the book’s adult themes and use of racially charged language, including the n-word, have prompted attempts to remove it from curricula and classrooms.
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She said she had thought “Watchman” a “pretty decent effort” but as a first-time writer “did as I was told” and recast the manuscript. “The prosecution would have you believe that my client, Ms Nelle “Harper” Lee, is the unwitting and unfortunate victim of ‘elder abuse”, that her rights as an individual, as an author, as a person who has steadfastly defended herself from the false flattery of publicity for over half a century, is now being cruelly exploited and thrust back into the public spotlight for the edification and financial gain of others. Now, it’s being published with very few changes. “It’s too easy for a child to see something either as good or as bad, but they don’t have those conflicts we grownups have, where we can see the grey areas”. “[I] went home that night and read the whole thing and just fell in love with it from the first sentence”. “Her writing about Scout Finch’s escapades is great, and there isn’t enough of it”.
