Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

I never really wanted to read this book but a long train journey and a lack of any other reading material led to it being ticked off the list. I questioned the motives surrounding the publication of Harper Lee’s follow up. It was suspicious that after a 55 year hiatus, the elderly author was wheeled out of her secluded, and most likely pleasant, existence to face the second bestseller storm she would encounter in her life. However, as To Kill a Mocking Bird is such a classic, I thought I would read Go Set a Watchman just so I could answer in the affirmative when asked if I have read it.

However, I didn’t get it.

About 200 pages in I was enjoying the retreat to Maycomb, Alabama. The drawling tones of the residents, the non-abiding auto-mow-bills and the slacks the grown-up Scout loafs about in - like a fictional Katharine Hepburn - opens the story up like a feature picture in waiting. I also admired the witty rural humour and eloquent language Lee put down with ease – words like “axiomatic” and “coterie” had me hastily reaching for the dictionary.

But, spoiler alert! It was the ending that I just didn’t understand and as I thought the publication of this book was fathomlessly pointless.

So Jean-Louise (Scout) finds out her father Atticus Finch is racist and this devastates her whole conception of the world and her memories of childhood. Her fiancé is also a racist and after engaging in a blow-out row with the both of them Jean-Louise decides to promptly leave Maycomb and never return. Her uncle then shows up, proceeds to beat her up until she is seeing stars, then he gets her drunk and THEN she decides to stay.

I’d love to throw in terms like “disillusionment” or “love of family” but instead I think I will forever view To Kill A Mocking Bird and Go Set a Watchman as two things that are part of the same story -yet completely separate - like the Jackson Five and Michael Jackson’s solo career, Grease and Grease 2, Dirty Dancing and Dirty Dancing 2… the list goes on. It’s a bit of a shame really.