Go Set a Watchman by Harper LeeMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
Go Set a Watchman is not a novel. It’s a series of sketches that happen to use the same names and locale as To Kill a Mockingbird -- it includes several chapters that do nothing to advance anything, a few charming flashbacks to scenes with Jem and Dill, some gut-wrenching pages-and-pages of the most vile, racist stuff (being spoken by various people, including Atticus), & a spot of humor. As a book, its purpose is totally, totally different.
It should have been part of Lee’s papers, cataloged in some library, and accessible to scholars or other curious folk who wanted to see how the famous book began. Publishing it as a novel is just.plain.wrong.
And now there might be a third? oy.
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2 comments:
I've been skeptical about this book, and I think I'm not even going to bother because it sounds like this was her notes or her sketches for a novel she eventually wrote. And we can see why the publisher asked her to write the novel that ended up being published.
I have been very skeptical about this. It seems as though this is her sketches, character development, and outlines and notes. This should not have been published as a novel. It's clear that the publisher had her write the novel that was published because this was a foundation to be built upon.
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