Reviews
Don't let 'Go Set a Watchman' change the way you think about Atticus Finch…the hard truth is that a man such as Atticus, born barely a decade after Reconstruction to a family of Southern gentry, would have had a complicated and tortuous history with race., Atticus' complexity makes Go Set a Watchman worth reading. With Mockingbird , Harper Lee made us question what we know and who we think we are. Go Set a Watchman continues in this noble literary tradition., A significant aspect of this novel is that it asks us to see Atticus now not merely as a hero, a god, but as a flesh-and-blood man with shortcomings and moral failing, enabling us to see ourselves for all our complexities and contradictions., What makes Go Set a Watchman memorable is its sophisticated and even prescient view of the long march for racial justice. Remarkably, a novel written that long ago has a lot to say about our current struggles with race and inequality., [ Go Set a Watchman ] captures some of the same small-town Southern humor and preoccupation with America's great struggle: race., Go Set a Watchman provides valuable insight into the generous, complex mind of one of America's most important authors., The success of Go Set a Watchman ... lies both in its depiction of Jean Louise reckoning with her father's beliefs, and in the manner by which it integrates those beliefs into the Atticus we know., Don't let 'Go Set a Watchman' change the way you think about Atticus Finch...the hard truth is that a man such as Atticus, born barely a decade after Reconstruction to a family of Southern gentry, would have had a complicated and tortuous history with race., A coming-of-age novel in which Scout becomes her own woman... Go Set a Watchman 's voice is beguiling and distinctive, and reminiscent of Mockingbird . (It) can't be dismissed as literary scraps from Lee's imagination. It has too much integrity for that., [ Go Set a Watchman ] contains the familiar pleasures of Ms. Lee's writing- the easy, drawling rhythms, the flashes of insouciant humor, the love of anecdote., Go Set a Watchman is such an important book, perhaps the most important novel on race to come out of the white South in decades...|9780062454911|, A deftly written tale... there's something undeniably comforting and familiar about sinking into Lee's prose once again., Go Set a Watchman offers a rich and complex story... To make the novel about pinning the right label on Atticus is to miss the point., Go Set a Watchman comes to us at exactly the right moment. All important works of art do. They come when we don't know how much we need them., Go Set a Watchman 's greatest asset may be its role in sparking frank discussion about America's woeful track record when it comes to racial equality., One overarching theme that many critics have zeroed in on is that there is a lot to learn from the novel, as both a writer and a reader., Lee's ability with description is evident... with long sentences beautifully rendered and evoking a world long lost to history, but welcoming all the same., ...the voice we came to know so well in To Kill a Mockingbird - funny, ornery, rulebreaking - is right here in Go Set a Watchman , too, as exasperating and captivating as ever., In this powerful newly published story about the Finch family, Lee presents a wider window into the white Southern heart, and tells us it is finally time for us all to shatter the false gods of the past and be free., Go Set a Watchman is more complex than Harper Lee's original classic. A satisfying novel... it is, in most respects, a new work, and a pleasure, revelation and genuine literary event., As Faulkner said, the only good stories are the ones about the human heart in conflict with itself. And that's a pretty good summation of Go Set a Watchman ., [ Go Set a Watchman is] filled with the evocative language, realistic dialogue and sense of place that partially explains what made Mockingbird so beloved.
