Go Set a Watchman (2015)

There's so much to say about Watchman that I'm not even going to try. Plenty of critics are issuing opinions, and I don't have any insights above or beyond what people who do this for a living are going to say. I'll simply say that I approached Watchman as a draft novel and as a reader who has no particular emotional attachment to Mockingbird, and seeing it through that lens, I loved it. Harper Lee is (was?) a great writer, and her refusal to publish more is a huge loss. If there's a third book, as recent rumors claim, I'll read that one too. What I really want, though, is a detailed explanation for how Go Set a Watchman evolved into To Kill a Mockingbird --I mean the nuts and bolts of Lee's thought process as she revised and rewrote her manuscript. But I doubt a woman who refuses to speak to the press will be publishing her journals anytime soon (assuming she even kept journals of that process), so I will learn to live with the want.

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Didn't want to do 3, just to say 3.5 stars, so gave it a 4 star rating. Could definitely hear Harper's voice and was reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird, which was vry enjoyable. I think however, that the editor either the first time the manuscript came across his desk or when it was found again, could have done a better job to tighten it up. It felt like it didn't really get into the gist of this story until about 1/2 way through. I wish there was a third book and explore how things got worse and how a gentlemen such as Atticus might have changed his mind. ( )

This left me confused and disappointed. I loved "To kill a mockingbird". But, Go set a Watchman is so oddly different, it doesn't even feel like the same author.

***There will be some spoilers here***

This focuses solely on Jean Louise, she no longer goes by Scout. Her brother Jem has died 2 yrs prior to this book, the first of many confusing decisions Harper Lee made with this one.

Jean Louise returns to Maycomb, from New York, where she lives now, to find things have changed. Apparently Atticus, her father, is a racists now...yes, the same man that raised her to be kind and believe in equal rights for all. The same man that defended a black man named Tom Robinson against rape charges in TKAMB(To kill a mockingbird), the main plot and storyline of that book. Oh, and surprise!...Tom Robinson was acquitted in this book, although he was convicted and later shot to death while trying to escape in TKAMB. This bit of plot swap baffled me to the point that I actually went back to the TKAMB to make sure I hadn't missed something, had memory lapse, or lost my mind.

Atticus, his beliefs, how he raises his children, the trials and tribulations that the family endures to support their views, the wonderful man and father he is....these things are so integral to the story told in TKAMB, it feels like such an injustice, a disservice to his character to completely change him.

Not only is Atticus a racists, but apparently Henry is too. Henry? Who's Henry?? This is supposedly her brother's best childhood friend, whom they spent their entire childhood doing everything with, but wasn't even a character in TKAMB. Dill, who actually filled this role in the TKAMB, is entirely absent here and only briefly mentioned. Henry wants to marry Jean Louise, always has and has apparently proposed multiple times, another role Dill filled in TKAMB. Dill and Scouts relationship and Dills childhood proposal was one of the sweetest and cutest parts of the book and I was looking forward to seeing the dynamics of their relationship as adults. Why??!! Why create an entirely new character?? Henry serves no purpose and does nothing as a supporting character that Dill could not have done.

These aren't the only changes....Uncle Jack, a physician, made appearances in TKAMB, but lived in Mobile. Here, he lives in Maycomb and has played much larger role in Scout and Jems childhood. He also has a completely different persona and is supposedly a somewhat looney eccentric. Aunt Alexandra's storyline has changed as well, and she has always lived in Maycomb, as to where in TKAMB she moved in to help raise Scout with a woman's influence, but had a home in Finches landing, their families longtime homestead. The family no longer even owns the homestead in this book.

Calpernia......Cal was one of my favorites in TKAMB. She raised Jem and Scout and had a very close relationship with both children and Atticus. Cal was from Finches landing, where she and her family had always been in service for and a part of the Finch family. She moved to Maycomb with Atticus and his wife when they married and purchased a home there. She started as a nanny and ended up a Mother to the kids after their Mother died when Scout was 2. Cal, in this book, is not only no longer with the family, but apparently always harbored animosity and hatred towards them.

This book has an entirely different feel, an almost entirely different storyline, but still manages to mimic TKAMB in entire paragraphs that feel like page fillers. I found several of these, especially when describing Maycomb or giving family history, essentially copied and pasted directly from TKAMB.

A total disappointment. Supposedly, Harper Lee has said this was her original idea for TKAMB, but had changed it to appease her publisher or someone .... IMO she should have stuck with their ideas and left it at that. ( )

I definitely liked some parts of the book, but I don’t know how I feel about it. I liked revisiting familiar characters and I liked the flashbacks and her relationship with Hank. But that’s about all. Atticus’s new attitude was jarring and felt, at least at first, like a complete betrayal. I suppose that was the only way for Lee to invoke Scout’s own feelings of confusion and betrayal, but it felt a little forced. It makes me want to reread Mockingbird to see if Atticus’s apparent love of justice, not equality, can be seen in hindsight.

What first made hesitant was Lee’s usage of the belief in states’ rights as the common ground. Southern memory of the Civil War tends to replace slavery with states’ rights in order to avoid answering the question of who was right and who was wrong. It’s a false sense of just cause. No one spoke of states’ rights until the war was over - Apostles of Disunion discusses this in detail.

From there, we careen wildly. The climax is never resolved in any fulfilling way. Scout is told she is a bigot for not listening to the actual bigots. In fact, the ultimate message seems to be “blacks and whites are just different.”

The focus of the book is a white woman’s struggle to form her own individual conscience. It is not a discussion of segregation- we never even find out what happens to Zeebo!

I am very disappointed that claims to be a sequel seems to have moved decades backwards in American racial thinking.
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