Go Set a Watchman

July 20, 2015
Reviewed by Louisa Ermelino The editor who rejected Lee's first effort had the right idea. The novel the world has been waiting for is clearly the work of a novice, with poor characterization (how did the beloved Scout grow up to be such a preachy bore, even as she serves as the book's moral compass?), lengthy exposition, and ultimately not much story, unless you consider Scout thinking she's pregnant because she was French-kissed or her losing her falsies at the school dance compelling. The book opens in the 1950s with Jean Louise, a grown-up 26-year-old Scout, returning to Maycomb from New York, where she's been living as an independent woman. Jean Louise is there to see Atticus, now in his seventies and debilitated by arthritis. She arrives in a town bristling from the NAACP's actions to desegregate the schools. Her aunt Zandra, the classic Southern gentlewoman, berates Jean Louise for wearing slacks and for considering her longtime friend and Atticus protégé Henry Clinton as a potential husbandâZandra dubs him trash. But the crux of the book is that Atticus and Henry are racist, as is everyone else in Jean Louise's old life (even her childhood caretaker, Calpurnia, sees the white folks as the enemy). The presentation of the South pushing back against the dictates of the Federal government, utilizing characters from a book that was about justice prevailing in the South through the efforts of an unambiguous hero, is a worthy endeavor. Lee just doesn't do the job with any aplomb. The theme of the book is basically about not being able to go home again, as Jean Louise sums it up in her confrontation with Atticus: "there's no place for me anymore in Maycomb, and I'll never be entirely at home anywhere else." As a picture of the desegregating South, the novel is interesting but heavy-handed, with harsh language and rough sentiments: "Do you want them in our world?" Atticus asks his daughter. The temptation to publish another Lee novel was undoubtedly great, but it's a little like finding out there's no Santa Claus.

Oscar-winning actress and Southern girl Reese Witherspoon portrays the narrator of the masterpiece TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, who is now an adult called by her full name, Jean Louise, living in New York City. As she describes her return to her hometown for an annual visit, the story features many of the same characters in MOCKINGBIRD, but they're radically different in outlook. All are portrayed by Witherspoon with perfect pitch and pacing, and the sure hand of a talented actress who is well aware of the region's racially fraught past. Lee's new novel draws on the same theme as MOCKINGBIRD--empathy--but as Witherspoon wistfully portrays Atticus, Scout, and others, listeners will need to find new ways of understanding them. R.O. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

September 15, 2015

Scout, who now goes by Jean Louise, is 26, and returns to Macomb, AL, from New York, where she has been living, to find that her beloved father, Atticus, now old and crippled with arthritis, has joined the White Citizen's Council and adamantly opposes the NAACP. She struggles to understand his decision, one that will shock readers of To Kill a Mockingbird, who remember Atticus defending a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Lacking the power and narrative quality of Mockingbird, this coming-of-age novel does present a vivid picture of small-town life, complete with its bigotry and stereotypes. Jean Louise doesn't fare as well, though; her rebellious personality is better suited to the childhood shenanigans described in Mockingbird. Reese Witherspoon narrates credibly, though perhaps more dramatically than necessary. VERDICT Listeners curious about this book after all of the hype will probably be disappointed, not only in its main characters but in the long, polemical discussions of race that try to justify racism. ["Disturbing, important, and not to be compared with Mockingbird; this book is its own signal work": LJ 8/15 starred review of the Harper hc.]--Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2015
The long-awaited, much-discussed sequel that might have been a prequel-and that makes tolerably good company for its classic predecessor. It's not To Kill a Mockingbird, and it too often reads like a first draft, but Lee's story nonetheless has weight and gravity. Scout-that is, Miss Jean Louise Finch-has been living in New York for years. As the story opens, she's on the way back to Maycomb, Alabama, wearing "gray slacks, a black sleeveless blouse, white socks, and loafers," an outfit calculated to offend her prim and proper aunt. The time is pre-Kennedy; in an early sighting, Atticus Finch, square-jawed crusader for justice, is glaring at a book about Alger Hiss. But is Atticus really on the side of justice? As Scout wanders from porch to porch and parlor to parlor on both the black and white sides of the tracks, she hears stories that complicate her-and our-understanding of her father. To modern eyes, Atticus harbors racist sentiments: "Jean Louise," he says in one exchange, "Have you ever considered that you can't have a set of backward people living among people advanced in one kind of civilization and have a social Arcadia?" Though Scout is shocked by Atticus' pronouncements that African-Americans are not yet prepared to enjoy full civil rights, her father is far less a Strom Thurmond-school segregationist than an old-school conservative of evolving views, "a healthy old man with a constitutional mistrust of paternalism and government in large doses," as her uncle puts it. Perhaps the real revelation is that Scout is sometimes unpleasant and often unpleasantly confrontational, as a young person among oldsters can be. Lee, who is plainly on the side of equality, writes of class, religion, and race, but most affectingly of the clash of generations and traditions, with an Atticus tolerant and approving of Scout's reformist ways: "I certainly hoped a daughter of mine'd hold her ground for what she thinks is right-stand up to me first of all." It's not To Kill a Mockingbird, yes, but it's very much worth reading.

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