Go Set a Watchman

Is it really ten years since the controversial posthumous publication of Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman? Not a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird, as it was marketed at the time, even though it is set years after Mockingbird and with largely the same cast of characters -- if anything it's an early draft of that well-beloved book. I remember when Watchman was released and there was an outcry that this story had ruined the other, particularly by destroying the nobility of Atticus Finch.

So. What did I make of Go Set a Watchman? As a novel, it's ... not great. To Kill a Mockingbird is a deeper, better structured, more thoughtful, better developed story in every way. Go Set a Watchman revolves around twenty-something Jean Louise (Scout) becoming disillusioned with her father when she sees him being complicit with racism. It's all about growing up, standing by your own opinions. Atticus doesn't try to argue Jean Louise out of her New York liberal attitudes; instead he patronisingly explains why they won't work in Maycomb. Worse, her kindly uncle gives her a smack round the chops -- for her own good, you understand.

It's hard to read, and I can understand why so many people felt that wise, just Atticus had been besmirched. To Kill a Mockingbird has been a white saviour fantasy for so long, it's very hard to let it go, or at least to see it in a different context. It's a book of its time, and even though the attitudes it expresses would have been progressive for that time, they now seem timorous and wrong-headed. I winced more than once, and perhaps it would have been better to have left it in that bottom drawer, but reading Go Set a Watchman was an interesting exercise.