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A review by kimnlove56
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5.0
I always regard To Kill a Mockingbird as my favorite high-school read, but I hadn’t revisited it since then. With this reading, I was a bit worried that the beginning sounds like an a apologist’s depiction of small-town small-mindedness, a “look how people of different sorts all live together” kind of idealism. Just imagine yourself in the other folks’ shoes and understand their depression-era struggles. I wasn’t convinced, and I’m still not, that Atticus is the progressive we all want him to be, that his acceptance of the town’s black citizens goes much beyond a goodly concern for a lesser people. The trial’s climax, however, hits close to home. It’s impossible not to superimpose the trial, where evidence, reason and decency are thwarted by racism, over today’s political and social climate. I saw my pre-election optimism (and yes, naivete) mirrored in Jem’s excitement, and felt his same anger and frustration when it played out, in our minds, in the worst possible way.