Author : Harper Lee
Narrators : Reese Witherspoon
Genre : Romance
Publisher : Caedmon
Listening Length : 6 hours 57 minutes
Rating : 1/5
Narrator Rating : 4.5/5
I’d wanted to read “Go Set a Watchman” because it’s written by the author of To Kill a Mockingbird and I was curious about the sequel. This book was disappointing, because even though it is chronologically a sequel it doesn’t follow through with an equally interesting story or even one that continues in the same spirit.
Scout, the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird is now a young woman, 26 year old Jean Louise living in New York , and she’s visiting home. This time though, she notices that her father – the saintly Atticus Finch, who has taught her everything she knows and believes about morality and equality, has racist views. And so does her boyfriend Henry Clinton. Confrontation brings disillusionment and a whole lot of gobbledygook about heartbreak.
To say that I’m confused is putting it mildly. This book completely reverses the character of Atticus. It is not a very coherent book. Although it is not very long, it meanders around for about 3 hours before bringing us to the crux of the problem, and then 4 long hours later comes to an unsatisfactory end. Jean Louise is the main protagonist and she is an annoying one – a smug, entitled miss who goes to pieces when she finds dearest daddy isn’t what she thought he was; I wasn’t sure I felt for her.
If you loved “To Kill A Mockingbird” you should skip this book. Now I read, as I go about finding how dear old Atticus went from being the upholder of justice to just another Southern man subtly advocating segregation, that it was an initial draft of Mockingbird. It does read like an unpolished draft, so I see no purpose in its release, except to tarnish the image of a much-beloved, righteous hero.
Narrator Reese Witherspoon does a marvelous job with her Southern accents, and helped me finish this otherwise disappointing book.
