This was another hard call, since Nelle Harper Lee has only published two works, and one of those was fairly controversial. To Kill a Mockingbird is an American classic, and it deals with themes of race and class through the eyes of Scout – a girl who’s just starting to grow up and learn more about the world around her. Her other credited work was Go Set a Watchman, which was published a year before her death. It was published as a sequel to her first book, but for a while, people argued about how much of it she’d actually written or whether she’d truly consented to having it published. Eventually, it was confirmed to be an early draft of Mockingbird, but fans were still shocked to read it in the way it was presented to them. Scout’s all grown up in Watchman, and in this book, she learns that her gentle, wise father who spent his time championing a black defendant in court was secretly a racist. It’s certainly a blow to the legacy of the beloved lawyer Atticus Finch if you read it as a sequel now. If instead you look at it and think what might have been, it might make you appreciate Mockingbird a little more, because that was one gripping work that still deserves to be read and discussed.
Unrelated Harper Lee fun fact: I share her birthday on April 28. That doesn’t really fit into my list or reviews at all, but I felt like I had to mention it.
Good post. I learn something totally new and challenging on blogs I stumbleupon every day.
It’s always interesting to read through content from other authors and use a little something from
other sites.