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Art & Books Books

Go set a watchman by Harper Lee

GO SET A WATCHMAN by Harper Lee (HarperCollins), 278 pages, $34.99 cloth. Rating: NN


Get a grip, people. Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman was never intended for publication, so there’s no reason to get so enraged that it’s not very good. It was always a draft for a first novel, and her original editor knew it.

When New York City working woman Scout returns to her hometown of Maycomb, Alabama, in the late 50s – just after the Supreme Court’s Brown vs Board of Education decision has slapped down the principle of states’ rights – she discovers that her adored father, Atticus, is a bigot and Maycomb still a hotbed of racism.

None of the characters is deeply developed, except Scout, who’s obviously based on the author herself and has a lot to say. Sexually liberated, she shocks the townsfolk and, unusual for the era, isn’t jumping at the chance to marry good-willed Hank.

The premise – will her changing values forever alienate her from her roots? – is pretty decent.

But the arguments are more speeches than anything else, and an unnerving sequence in which her beloved uncle smacks her across the face, in what is meant to seem like a good way, suggests that Go Set A Watchman is way past its best-before date. Actually, it should never have seen the light of day.

Good on her editor in the 50s, who noticed the seed of a great plot line that would become To Kill A Mockingbird: Atticus’s decision 20 years before Watchman’s events to defend a black man on a rape charge, referred to here in a few paragraphs. And Scout’s childhood memories, especially a sequence in which she, her brother and her friend Dill recreate a baptism, are some of the strongest elements. No wonder Lee was told to write a book from the point of view of a small girl instead of an adult. 

To Kill A Mockingbird was the book Lee needed to write. Leave this one alone.

susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole

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