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Loading... To Kill a Mockingbirdby Harper Lee
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. The library I work at was hosting the 'Big Read' and chose this book for '08. I had read it in high school but the hubby hadn't so we decided to read it aloud to each other. I understood so much more this time around (partly because I was a pretty naive teenager) and loved every minute of it.Scout's recollections are funny, smart, heartbreaking, and endearing as only as child's can be. It was amazing to step back in time to learn about small town Southern life in the midst of a crisis. The slow yet steady building of events sucks you in until you are so entrenched in Scout's persona that you feel the same emotions. This time I was much more taken with Jem's character -- I appreciated his quest to become every much the honest gentleman that Atticus is. A pure delight! (  ) mmillet | Dec 14, 2009 |  I loved this book! I was fourteen when I read it. It's part mystery, part adventure. There are lots of lessons to be learned from it. (  )1  MMWiseheart | Dec 9, 2009 | In this book it tells about a young man accused of a crime just becuase of his race. With the help of two young children he may be able to prove the court wrong! This is an eye opening and heart warming story, i highly recamend it. (  )1 MrsSClass | Dec 7, 2009 | Every time I pick this novel up, I am amazed at how well written and engaging it is. I can go years without reading it, and not pay any attention to it, and then pick it up and have dozens of truths about how the world works and thinks, and dozens of memories about my own childhood, about the first time I encountered this novel, and my own hopes and dreams that were created when reading about the trial that Atticus took on. This is one of those novels that I encourage everyone to read. Even if reading isn't your thing, or if you prefer non-fiction or whatnot. Harper Lee created a moving and magnificent story that will get to the core of anyone that reads it. (  )2 dragonfairy | Dec 6, 2009 | Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up. 1 |  archerje | Dec 5, 2009 | 
 Author Lee, 34, an Alabaman, has written her first novel with all of the tactile brilliance and none of the preciosity generally supposed to be standard swamp-warfare issue for Southern writers. The novel is an account of an awakening to good and evil, and a faint catechistic flavor may have been inevitable. But it is faint indeed; Novelist Lee's prose has an edge that cuts through cant, and she teaches the reader an astonishing number of useful truths about little girls and about Southern life. There are some improbable and sentimental moments in the story, but there are also great moments of laughter that belong to memory and a novelist's hand... Miss Lee's original characters are people to cherish in this winning first novel by a fresh writer with something significant to say, South and North. The dialogue of Miss Lee's refreshingly varied characters is a constant delight in its authenticity and swift revelation of personality. Te events connecting the Finches with the Ewell-Robinson lawsuit develop quietly and logically, unifying the plot and dramatizing the author's level-headed plea for interracial understanding... Moviegoing readers will be able to cast most of the roles very quickly, but it is no disparagement of Miss Lee's winning book to say that it could be the basis of an excellent film.
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| Book description |
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Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.
Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:53 -0400)
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