Harper Lee

Go Set a Watchman (Hardcover)

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(3.67) 3.67 stars out of 9 reviews 9 reviews
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Go Set a Watchman (Hardcover)

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3.67 out of 5stars
(9 reviews)

Most helpful positive review

5.00 out of 5 stars review
Verified Purchaser
07/16/2015
The fact this book exi...
The fact this book exists and that we are reading it is an incredible thing. Happily there's no question this is Harper Lee's voice, straight out of the 1950s. This being her first manuscript I expected it to read like a less mature work than it does. The dialogue is just brilliant and engaging, while the setting, character portrayals and humour are all a perfect echo of her other novel. This novel is deceptive in that it's slow and peaceful to get going. It builds around Jean Louise revisiting her home town, some cosy flashbacks and a marriage proposal, before a central event comes into play and the real story begins. I'm not sure it's possible to fully appreciate the hurt that Jean Louise experiences unless you've read the other novel first. It ramps up from there to a tumultuous conclusion that takes some time to reflect on. It's not a plot driven by action like modern fare. This is a good old-fashioned clash of moral cymbals, and the whole symphony is chiming in by the time it plays through its final chapters. To avoid spoilers all I can say is, it does exactly what it needed to do if it was going to matter. It puzzles me how this could have been left forgotten in a drawer, box, whatever, for so long. I'm so grateful that it was found and that I got to read it. It ends on a different note - an essential note, but different - and so may not be as popularly embraced as the first, but if you enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird then this has many rewards and even a few surprises in store and it is entirely worthy of your time.
Cecrow

Most helpful negative review

3.00 out of 5 stars review
Verified Purchaser
05/28/2021
This book needs an editor. Oh, wait!…
This book needs an editor. Oh, wait! It had one. He suggested that Harper Lee do a full re-write focusing on the childhood memories that jumped from the pages of this book. I'm pretty sure that worked out well. When this was written, it was brave of Ms. Lee to write an adult Scout returning from a life in New York City to discover that her beloved and respected father, Atticus, along with pretty much everyone else in the town is an ugly racist who attends KKK meetings and is terrified about Civil Rights. I had no real issue with the fact that this Atticus is different from the Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird since they are both characters representing what Lee needs them to in order to tell the story of virulent Southern racism in very different novels. There is a scene that makes this worth the price of admission. In it, adult Scout visits her adored maternal childhood nanny, Calpurnia. The meeting between the two is written with such emotional accuracy that it made my neck hair stand up. It surprises me that this scene isn't written about more in reviews. I suspect it would be if there wasn't such uproar about the "new" version of Atticus. It is also interesting to see the development of Lee as a writer between the two books. She evolves to a surety and deftness between them. In this way, the fact that this book cries for editing is less off-putting. If you love To Kill a Mockingbird but won't be devastated by the difference between the two Atticuses (Atteci?), this is worth the read. Look out for the scene with Calpurnia.
nancyewhite
  • 4.00 out of 5 stars review
    Verified Purchaser
    10/28/2021
    I'll start with a short recap of the…
    I'll start with a short recap of the circumstances regarding the release of this book as I have understood them. Harper Lee wrote Go Set a Watchman in the late 1950s and sent it to a publisher. Someone there read it, saw promise in the writing, but asked her to try again, focusing on the main character's childhood instead of her young adulthood. To Kill a Mockingbird was the result of this rewrite. First for a review of Go Set a Watchman on its own merits. In this book, Jean Louise Finch returns from New York City to her small, Southern hometown in Maycomb County, Alabama. She is in her 20s and being courted by a Maycomb young man who she grew up with, Hank Clinton. Atticus, her father, is aging and has rheumatoid arthritis which is slowing down his body, but not his brain. Coming home brings up memories for Jean Louise; she feels both tied to the town and separate from it. She remembers several scenes from her childhood and teenage years, and I did find that these flashbacks were the most genuine and best written parts of the book. Then Jean Louise's world is shattered when she finds that her father is not the perfect person that she grew up believing him to be. She finds him at a meeting of a Town Council that is united in opposing the Civil Rights legislation that is being passed throughout the country. There is a lot of the "n" word being thrown around, and a lot of hate and invective speech being spewed. It is not easy to read. And it is not easy to see Atticus agreeing that blacks are too simple and backward to deserve the same rights as whites -- that there is no way he will sit back and accept the federal government's ideas as a way for Southerners to live. The last half of the book is highly political and racist and sort of loses the story line to arguments between Jean Louise and various characters about the topic. In the end, Jean Louise will have to decide if she will stay in Maycomb and try to change the town from the inside or escape back to New York and leave it all behind. This is a grown up book with grown up ideas. I can't imagine it would have gone over well in the South, or really anywhere, being published in the 1960s. It would have been so raw - it still feels raw to read. Leaving aside the segregation and politics, the writing itself is a bit uneven. It's good, but not great. I was annoyed by the relationship between Jean Louise and Hank (something a little too demeaning toward Jean Louise) and some of the potential story lines get a bit lost in the politics. But, really, it's good overall, just uncomfortable because of the topic. Now, if you have reverence for the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird, especially Atticus and Calpurnia, you should probably skip this because it will color your view on these characters. One reason I read Go Set a Watchman was because I was so interested in the writing process of taking one book idea and creating another from it (especially when that rewrite turned in to such an amazing book). I was surprised at just how little of the material was used in TKAM. Almost nothing at all, even the childhood flashbacks in GSAW, made it in to TKAM. Go Set a Watchman absolutely does not have the charm or follow through of Lee's subsequent masterpiece. Scout's childhood voice gives charm, innocence, and an element of fantasy to To Kill a Mockingbird that makes it a great book. Go Set a Watchman is an interesting book, a good book, but is not destined to be a classic.
    japaul22
  • 3.00 out of 5 stars review
    Verified Purchaser
    10/03/2021
    I understand why she didn't want it…
    I understand why she didn't want it published. It's an uncomfortable story, poorly told. There are hints of the finesse of To Kill a Mockingbird. But, this isn't at all consistent. I don't regret reading it. But, don't need to read it again.
    Unknown
  • 3.00 out of 5 stars review
    Verified Purchaser
    05/28/2021
    This book needs an editor. Oh, wait!…
    This book needs an editor. Oh, wait! It had one. He suggested that Harper Lee do a full re-write focusing on the childhood memories that jumped from the pages of this book. I'm pretty sure that worked out well. When this was written, it was brave of Ms. Lee to write an adult Scout returning from a life in New York City to discover that her beloved and respected father, Atticus, along with pretty much everyone else in the town is an ugly racist who attends KKK meetings and is terrified about Civil Rights. I had no real issue with the fact that this Atticus is different from the Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird since they are both characters representing what Lee needs them to in order to tell the story of virulent Southern racism in very different novels. There is a scene that makes this worth the price of admission. In it, adult Scout visits her adored maternal childhood nanny, Calpurnia. The meeting between the two is written with such emotional accuracy that it made my neck hair stand up. It surprises me that this scene isn't written about more in reviews. I suspect it would be if there wasn't such uproar about the "new" version of Atticus. It is also interesting to see the development of Lee as a writer between the two books. She evolves to a surety and deftness between them. In this way, the fact that this book cries for editing is less off-putting. If you love To Kill a Mockingbird but won't be devastated by the difference between the two Atticuses (Atteci?), this is worth the read. Look out for the scene with Calpurnia.
    nancyewhite
  • 3.00 out of 5 stars review
    Verified Purchaser
    11/23/2020
    What was Lee thinking? What were her publishers thinking? Going into this book, I was aware that people were distraught because Atticus turned out to be a racist - and was his whole life, but his dedication to the letter of the law (if not the spirit) outweighed his bigotry. So, I was prepared for that. I was also prepared for writing that wasn't as polished as To Kill a Mockingbird as this was purportedly written first and then scrapped in lieu of the other story. What I wasn't prepared for was the deeper racism that was written as "fact" by Lee through Scout. It's more problematic because I'm not sure that Scout isn't Lee's way of inserting herself into the story, to share her point of view. There are things Scout agrees to about people of color in this book that are just over-the-top racist. Really blatantly disgustingly so, but their couched in her defense of PoC. So agreeing with others that they're less intelligent or child-like, or lazy...but saying that doesn't make it right to not give them a chance to grow. Maybe those misguided views paired with defending their right to live as free and equal people would have been boundary-breaking in the deep south in the '50s...but that's not when this book was released. Instead, it came out decades later and the offensiveness of those statements only grew with time. I won't give Lee the credit of complexity to believe she introduced those glaring flaws to Scout to stoke discussion. There's not enough other work from her to be able to determine satire or social criticism and frankly, I think taking into account the age she was when she wrote Go Set a Watchman and the deep-seated beliefs of the South (and the North for that matter) at the time, it's likely that Lee didn't see anything wrong with what Scout was saying and that makes me reluctant to ever re-read TKAM as I'm going to look at it through a very different lens and I don't know if the view will be as flattering for what was an American classic that was propped up as an indictment against racism. I nearly forgot - the story as a whole, wasn't horrible. It had an interesting premise and it would have worked without TKAM having existed, even if all the characters were deeply flawed. But the writing itself and the characters were bland. Lee had an amazing legacy with one book. She was well into her later life. I don't understand why after not releasing anything for 50 years or so, she chose to put this out there. It was a mistake. Edit: I wrote my initial review and then read other reviews and after a dozen or so, saw no one calling out the deep racism of Scout/Jean Louise and it's at least as horrible as Atticus' because Jean Louise doesn't even realize how racist she's being and Lee is putting her forward like a champion to fight against oppression. It took me just a moment to find a passage that illustrates what I mean. This conversation is between Scout and Atticus: "Let's look at it this way," said her father. "You realize that our Negro population is backward, don't you? You will concede that? You realize the full implications of the word 'backward' don't you?" "Yes sir." "You realize that the vast majority of them here in the South are unable to share fully in the responsibilities of citizenship, and why?" "Yes sir." There are more examples...they're not good.
    Sean191
  • 4.00 out of 5 stars review
    Verified Purchaser
    07/27/2015
    Go Set a Watchman was crowned Book of the Year months before it was finally published in mid-July. And as regards book publicity, both positive and negative, it certainly deserves that title, and could easily be dubbed Book of the Decade with little argument from either the book's supporters or its detractors. Watchman has split the book community almost right down the middle. For every reader who waited anxiously for the book to become available, there seems to be a reader who had already declared no interest in reading it – at least until all the hoopla died down. Some worry that Harper Lee has been hoodwinked into allowing what was really just a rejected manuscript into being published at all. A few even go so far as to doubt that she is even aware that the book has been published. Others, once they began to hear rumors that Lee exposes the much beloved Atticus Finch's racism in Watchman, declared that they would never read it because they did not want the Atticus character from To Kill a Mockingbird to be tainted in their minds. I tended to be in the “wait and see” camp myself, but I decided to drive from Houston to Monroeville, Alabama (Lee's hometown and residence) so that I could witness firsthand the festivities planned there for the book's unveiling. What I saw in Monroeville, and the conversations I had with the locals, leads me to believe that Lee is fully aware of what is happening with Watchman. Not one time did I hear anyone express any doubt at all about that and, in fact, the town celebrated the book and its author with great pride during the two days I was there. And, because I could not resist buying a copy of Watchman in the gift shop of the old Monroeville courthouse, my reading plan as regards the book changed – and I finished it before I made it back to Houston. Go Set a Watchman is certainly not nearly as polished as To Kill a Mockingbird. I found the book's first hundred pages (in which Lee sets up the premise for what is to follow) to be slow reading and was beginning to grow bored with what Watchman appeared to be. But then things got interesting. Jean Louise Finch, otherwise known as “Scout,” is the twenty-six-year-old narrator of Watchman. She is in Maycomb, Alabama, on a rare visit home from New York to what remains of her family there. The country is in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, a time of tension and turbulence in much of the South, and Jean Louise is finding it difficult to reconcile her childhood memories to what seems to be happening in Maycomb. When she finds that those to whom she is the closest, including both her father and the man she is engaged to marry, are secretly involved with the most blatant racists in the county to keep Negros “in their place,” she is ready to leave Maycomb and her family behind forever. In the end, Go Set a Watchman is a realistic look into the mindset of white Southerners of the time, men and women who feared destruction of the only way of life they had ever known. Good men, as well as evil men, were caught up in the struggle for full racial equality that was happening all around them. It was largely a matter of degree, and Atticus Finch, a good man was, after all, nothing but a man of his times. Go Set a Watchman is not a great book, but it is one that will have people talking about it for a long time. Those worried about Atticus Finch's “image” need only remember that Mockingbird is told through the eyes of a child and Watchman through the eyes of that now-adult child. Atticus may not be the saint from Mockingbird, but he is still a good man trying to do what he believes to be the right thing.
    SamSattler
  • 4.00 out of 5 stars review
    Verified Purchaser
    07/25/2015
    Controversy, speculati...
    Controversy, speculation and hype heralded the publication of Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman. It was almost enough to put me off reading it. Almost, but not quite. And I'm so glad. This was a well-written and powerful book. For anyone unfamiliar with the back story, Harper Lee submitted Go Set a Watchman to her publisher, and they asked her to rewrite it set 20 years earlier, when its main character, Jean Louise Finch, was a young girl nicknamed Scout. This is the book we all know and love, the classic To Kill a Mockingbird. The two books are similar in some respects: both deal with issues of race, as experienced by characters with the same names. But are the characters really the same people? That's hard to say. Lee did not set out to publish two books. She didn't intend to tell readers what happened after the events in TKAM. The best way to read these books are as companion pieces that allow the reader to consider similar issues through different lenses. In Go Set a Watchman, Jean Louise makes her annual trip home to Maycomb, Alabama. She reconnects with family and her lifelong friend Henry Clinton, who clearly wants more than friendship this time around. And Jean Louise is not entirely opposed to that idea. Through Jean Louise's eyes, Harper Lee gives us an ironic and sometimes amusing portrait of small town southern life; a chapter about the music in a Methodist worship service made me laugh out loud. But then, Jean Louise discovers a pamphlet in her father's house that sickens her. She took the pamphlet by one of its corners, held it like she would hold a dead rat by the tail, and walked into the kitchen. She held the pamphlet in front of her aunt. "What is this thing?" she said. And by the end of this chapter, The one human being she had ever fully and wholeheartedly trusted had failed her; the only man she had ever known to whom she could point and say with expert knowledge, "He is a gentleman, in his heart he is a gentleman," had betrayed her, publicly, grossly, and shamelessly. Then Harper Lee gets angry. Really angry. And Jean Louise is her voice, her "watchman": For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. ~ Isaiah 21:6 I can understand why Lee's publishers had her rewrite the book. It's not because of the writing, or the anger; it's because 1950s America was not ready for what she had to say. TKAM is a quieter book; Atticus' crusade for equal rights more level-headed. But while both books were written in the 1950s, I was struck by how the racial aspects resonate today. And maybe today it's time to be angry.
    lauralkeet
  • 5.00 out of 5 stars review
    Verified Purchaser
    07/16/2015
    The fact this book exi...
    The fact this book exists and that we are reading it is an incredible thing. Happily there's no question this is Harper Lee's voice, straight out of the 1950s. This being her first manuscript I expected it to read like a less mature work than it does. The dialogue is just brilliant and engaging, while the setting, character portrayals and humour are all a perfect echo of her other novel. This novel is deceptive in that it's slow and peaceful to get going. It builds around Jean Louise revisiting her home town, some cosy flashbacks and a marriage proposal, before a central event comes into play and the real story begins. I'm not sure it's possible to fully appreciate the hurt that Jean Louise experiences unless you've read the other novel first. It ramps up from there to a tumultuous conclusion that takes some time to reflect on. It's not a plot driven by action like modern fare. This is a good old-fashioned clash of moral cymbals, and the whole symphony is chiming in by the time it plays through its final chapters. To avoid spoilers all I can say is, it does exactly what it needed to do if it was going to matter. It puzzles me how this could have been left forgotten in a drawer, box, whatever, for so long. I'm so grateful that it was found and that I got to read it. It ends on a different note - an essential note, but different - and so may not be as popularly embraced as the first, but if you enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird then this has many rewards and even a few surprises in store and it is entirely worthy of your time.
    Cecrow
  • 4.00 out of 5 stars review
    Verified Purchaser
    07/15/2015
    In Go Set a Watchman, ...
    In Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee picks up with Atticus and Scout Finch, continuing their story from the time of older Scout narrating the events of To Kill a Mockingbird in flashback. Lee sets her narrative shortly after the events of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, with Scout, now an adult and going by her given name of Jean Louise, visiting Maycomb, AL after living in New York City for a number of years. While organizing some of her father's papers, she finds a racist pamphlet that her father received at a citizens' committee. She attends their meeting, sees her father in the company of a vehement racist, and has her entire view of the man challenged. Likewise, Lee's readers feel their world shake. Nearly every child in America reads To Kill a Mockingbird while in high school and sees the 1969 film with Gregory Peck portraying Atticus. While students may not appreciate it when they are young, Atticus' unshakable moral philosophy remains with them throughout adulthood. Readers of Go Set a Watchman can easily empathize with Jean Louise as she yells at Atticus, "I believed in you. I looked up to you, Atticus, like I never looked up to anybody in my life and never will again. If you had only given me some hint, if you had only broken your word with me a couple of times, if you had been bad-tempered or impatient with me - if you had been a lesser man, maybe I could have taken what I saw you doing" (p. 249-250). We, the readers, have taken Atticus into our hearts. His change in character feels like a personal betrayal. As Jean Louise says, "I grew up right here in your house, and I never knew what was in your mind. I only heard what you said" (p. 247). Atticus' brother, Dr. John Finch, explains to Jean Louise that she had anchored her conscience to Atticus', saying, "Every man's island, Jean Louise, every man's watchman, is his conscience" (p. 264-265). Lee presented the events of To Kill a Mockingbird through Jean Louise's rose-tinted memory of her father. Her memory cast him as a demigod among men. As Dr. Finch says, "Our gods are remote from us, Jean Louise. They must never descend to human level" (p. 266). Lee stripped away that child's view of Atticus and made him human in Go Set a Watchman. Dr. Finch tells Jean Louise, "He was letting you reduce him to the status of a human being" (p. 266). Most of the negative responses to Go Set a Watchman come from Lee's revelations about Atticus. No longer a pillar of morality, Atticus Finch is now a three-dimensional, human character. Lee has killed our god and we, like Scout, are left with the man. Lee's insight into Southern attitudes of the mid-1950s are just as relevant to today's audience as was her portrayal of the 1930s South to the audience of To Kill a Mockingbird. Dr. Finch describes the Southern mindset to Jean Louise, saying, "For years and years all that man thought he had that made him any better than his black brothers was the color of his skin. He was just as dirty, he smelled just as bad, he was just as poor. Nowadays he's got more than he ever had in his life, he has everything but breeding, he's freed himself from every stigma, but he sits nursing his hangover of hatred..." (p. 197). This description easily describes those who opposed Brown v. Board of Education in the 1950s as well as those who currently stand against Obergefell v. Hodges or who defend the Confederate flag. Jean Louise observes, "Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends" (p. 270-271). With her broken faith in Atticus, she can stand on her own for the morality she once saw in him and attempted to emulate, without his human failings shaking the bedrock of her idealism. In this way, Lee shows how Southerners can break from their past and moral bargaining to finally confront past wrongs and move forward. A complicated sequel, Go Set a Watchman can be read as a rough draft, published for its use in literary study, or taken at face value as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. In either case, its legacy is anything but clear, though it offers a far more mature view of the world. While the morality in To Kill a Mockingbird was easy to understand, Lee now forces her readers to confront the complicated and messy real world. If high school students read To Kill a Mockingbird, this is the college-level sequel that challenges their preconceived notions and deepens their understanding of the world.
    DarthDeverell
  • 3.00 out of 5 stars review
    Verified Purchaser
    07/13/2015
    Im still not sure how...
    I'm still not sure how I feel about this book. On the plus side: Scout has turned into the kind of feisty, I'm-not-much-interested-in-being-a-lady adult that I had hoped. There are some passages (tellingly descriptions of childhood incidents) so descriptive and funny they made me laugh out loud. But since Watchman was written first and heavily edited into To Kill a Mockingbird, should this book have been published? I'm sure its depiction of Atticus will upset a lot of Mockingbird lovers, especially since the book can be viewed as a sequel instead of the first-draft it actually was. Keep these things in mind and you may just enjoy catching up with some old friends, as I did.
    wellredhead