alittleposy 's review for:

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

3.0

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Immediately following the reading of this novel, I read a review of it in a magazine that claimed that having read it would forever taint my experience of To Kill a Mockingbird, one of my very favorite novels and one of the greatest American novels period. I disagree. Though it comes nowhere near the magic of TKAM (which I first read cover-to-cover one night when I was 13 and have read at least 10 times since), and although it's pretty much impossible to completely set aside all the baggage both its publication and pedigree burden it with as you read, I felt it was a solid work in itself that skillfully spells out some of the harsh truths about the views of many "respectable" white citizens in 1950s Alabama. Several long flashbacks about Jean Louise's childhood and adolescence, which interrupt the flow of this story and did not seem to relate to the narrative, were evidently what Harper Lee's editor latched on to and encouraged her to develop, eventually resulting in her master work. The irony is not lost on me. Go Set a Watchman is book that I would never have fallen in love with or returned to again and again. But I think it captures very well the horror of a sudden realization that people we know well are not everything we believed them to be, and I appreciated its willingness not to tidy up all the ugliness it exposes.