Still deciding what I think about this one.

Some spoilers, though not a lot of detail

Several reviewers, whose opinions of this book were not favorable--and even negative, apparently do not quite understand what life in the South was and is like for both whites and blacks.

The book begins with Jean Louise (Scout) Finch makes her annual pilgrimage home to Maycomb, Alabama from New York City by train. She is excited to come back to her childhood, though with the death of her brother Jem two years before, nothing is quite the same at it was. There is an ice cream parlor where the old house stood, Calpurnia has retired and gone to live with her people on the black side of town, and Scout's father, Atticus, in his seventies, has more bad days than good, afflicted with the rheumatism.

While Atticus' sister has come to live with him, and his brother, the eccentric doctor who only reads Victorian novels but is much more intelligent and wise than he lets on, lives in town, Jean Louise is still made to feel that she should come home and take care of Atticus, and in the meantime get married into an old respectable Maycomb family (and not the long-time friend and "boyfriend"). She has resisted, not because she doesn't want to do those things, but because she doesn't want anyone to tell her to do those things.

In the course of this story, Jean Louise eventually comes to realize that her father is human, that the way of life that she grew up with was, while not a lie, certainly not the truth. This is a picture of a woman who has to come to terms with having had a liberal upbringing while living in a very conservative state. She is a woman who has clung to her childhood fantasies of who her father is, who her friends are, and what her town represents. In Go Set a Watchman, an adult Jean Louise Finch grows up.

For fans of To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman is definitely written in the same style. There were many questions of the book's authenticity because of it's recent controversy, but regardless of this or whether Ms. Lee actually wanted to have it published, it is still an entertaining and thoroughly thoughtful read. The reader gets a sense of the Old South, just after World War II but before the extreme racial tensions of the 1960's. That was a time of another "Red Scare," of Communists hiding behind every tree and recruiting the black population to their cause behind the backs of whites in their communities. It was a time when people were becoming disenchanted with their government. No longer was the President of the United States revered--that seemed to die with FDR. No longer were people able to trust their government, what with Senator Joseph McCarthy in his waning years as a witch-hunter. And to top it off, it appeared that the Supreme Court was going the way of Abraham Lincoln and totally disregarding states' rights with their laws requiring desegregation. Jean Louise herself finds fault in the way the Supreme Court handled the desegregation filing by the NAACP, stating that it was in violation of the Tenth Amendment, which says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Despite her misgivings, she believes that the law had to be made. That desegregation would eventually happen, though it needed to happen in its own time, when everyone, whites and blacks, were ready. Her disenchantment with Atticus comes from finding out that he agreed with her on the one hand, but completely disagreed with her stance that it needed to occur at all.

This is a really difficult book to come to terms with. For those who live in the South, both black and white, this certainly hits home. These same tensions described here are the same as we are feeling today. Is it a coincidence that the book was released during a time of racial turmoil all over the country? Perhaps, but perhaps not. We may never know.

( )

Inizierò questa recensione in maniera piuttosto insolita: sono molto dispiaciuta di aver letto questo libro, non tanto perché non mi è piaciuto granché, ma perché mi ha reso davvero dubbiosa sul fatto che una scrittrice come Harper Lee abbia dato il suo consenso alla pubblicazione di Va’, metti una sentinella.

Il punto è che sembra una bozza e non un romanzo finito. È incoerente, logicamente molto debole, noioso a morte nella prima metà, non c’è una vera e propria trama – o anche solo una strada da percorrere in compagnia della scrittrice – e alcuni brevissimi paragrafi formati da una sola proposizione sembrano semplici appunti.

Ho capito la storia – e le tesi – che Lee voleva raccontare, ma penso che anche l’editor meno capace si sarebbe resu conto che questa storia non sta in piedi. Ci sono delle parti notevoli e che danno l’idea del bel romanzo che poteva essere, ma sono completamente abbandonate a loro stesse e lasciate alla deriva in pagine e pagine che non si capisce nemmeno perché sono lì.

Avrei preferito una pubblicazione critica che presentasse Va, metti una sentinella come la bozza informe che è piuttosto che farlo uscire come il seguito de Il buio oltre la siepe. ( )

I got lost in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, so I had to check out Go Set A Watchman. Go Set A Watchman didn’t hit me as hard as To Kill A Mockingbird, but I loved learning what happened to Jean Louis Finch, since she was the star of the show.

She returns home, after living in New York City, seeing Maycomb, Alabama in a new light. Sure, she has gotten older, but she has been away from the small town life. She had left behind her brother, father, and Henry, who patiently waited for her to return, believing they would be wed.

For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.

Jean Louis has done a lot of growing up, but her return gives her many life lessons, showing her that things are not always as they appear to be. Her father has never tried to influence her, and he does not try now. She will become her own person.

Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.

Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee did not hit me as hard as To Kill A Mockingbird, but I found so many words of wisdom in the pages, that I found myself nodding my head and thinking, well said. I feel both books should be must reads in English and History classes, for all high schools, North, South, East, and West. ( )

Warning: This review is spoilery, in case you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know the big reveal.

This is the story of a young woman who returns to the small southern town she grew up in, only to find that she is not able to feel at home and that her remaining family and friends hold racial and political views that she finds abhorrent. In particular, she is devastated to discover that her father, an attorney who instilled in her the firm principles of “equal rights for all, special privileges for none”, is a white supremacist, and that the black housekeeper who raised her does not actually love her as a daughter. In the end, she finds a way to reconcile the deep love she feels for her father with the fundamental moral divide between them. This story takes place and was written in the 1950’s, as the civil rights movement is heating up in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education, by a young woman who fled her small southern home town.

There are some bright spots in this book. The flashbacks to Jean Louise’s childhood stand out, and it is easy to understand why Harper Lee’s editor urged her to rewrite the book completely as the adult Jean Louise’s memories of key childhood events. The middle section of GSaW contains scenes that are deeply moving, where we experience Jean Louise’s pain and loss on finding that Calpurnia is using her “company manners” and treating her as any other grown white woman, and Jean Louise’s growing disquiet, then disbelieving horror, on discovering her father and boyfriend’s true beliefs and active participation in white supremacist activities.

I had some serious problems with this book, though. The first third is deadly dull and there are odd passages throughout the book that throw the pacing off, like the paragraphs that go on and on about the Methodist style of worship. Jean Louise is not exactly the “color blind” paragon of virtue that she believes herself to be, although maybe this reflects the actual limitations of white liberals in the 1950’s. I wasn’t alive then, so I don’t know. She apparently still views southern blacks as inherently inferior to whites and incapable of effective government, although she feels they still should be able to fully exercise their equal rights. As her uncle and father explain their points of view, we are treated to an argument for state’s rights and the revisionist version of the Civil War that was fought, not over slavery, but over state self-determination. Jean Louise does not point out the obvious flaws in these arguments. She doesn’t engage in debate. She merely shouts about his betrayal of the moral principles he taught her. In the end, she capitulates and apologizes for haranguing her father over his views and his betrayal, and attempts to reconcile the love she feels for him by accepting his views as a mere disagreement rather than a moral outrage. Although she appeared to have regarded Calpurnia as a mother-figure and loved her, she makes no attempt to reconcile with her. She seems to have written Calpurnia off completely. I thought this most telling of all.

Before I read this book, I was aware of the controversy regarding whether Harper Lee even had the cognitive ability to fully understand and authorize the release of this book. After reading it, I am inclined to believe that it was a shameless money grab by her lawyer and publisher. I can’t believe she would have wanted this book to be released.

Audiobook version, borrowed via Overdrive from my local library. Reese Witherspoon is a tremendously talented woman. Her performance in reading the audio version of Go Set a Watchman helped smooth over some of this book’s many flaws, so I gave the book an additional star for her excellent reading. ( )