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Book Review: Harper Lee

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To Kill A Mocking Bird is making its come back with Harper Lee releasing a new book. Now I don’t know about you but If you’re from the Uk aged probably my age and maybe older To Kill A Mocking Bird was the book you had to do for your GCSE. At that age you don’t wanna do what the teacher tells you, so reading a book set in the 50s was 100% not cool. One thing I wish I could do is go back to my school years, yes I said it. Not only because I loved school and I’m not afraid to admit it. There was something about school for me that I would run back to in a heart beat. ( Is that a saying or did I completely make that up?) Who knows, right? When this book was forced upon us I did not read it how it should be read. I read the sections that I HAD to and that was about it. Now 5 years on and I’m actually buying this book for leisure, to read in my own time and it hasn’t been forced on me. I know crazy!

The main reasons I got this book was because I was so intrigued by Harper Lee’s new book Go Set A Watchman, I knew that this book followed To Kill A Mocking Bird so knew I really had to read this first to get a real understanding of what the book was really all about. I loved it. The book is basically about race and class in the 50s, taking you through it all by the views of a 6/9 year old, which for me really put perspective on things. If your’e thinking about reading this book I would strongly advise that you give it time. Its not one of those books that you are immediately hooked too, it takes a good few chapters before you really get to understand the characters and what they resemble etc. Well it did for me anyway, it may not for you. Once I was finished I knew I couldn’t wait to start the next.

Go Set A Watchman is set around ten years later to her first book, which I thought would be interesting to see how things change over time, with this one it really took me a long time to get into it. I would say a good half way. All because I felt that characters where introduced that I totally didn’t understand who they where and I also found that the book chopped and changed between first and third person the whole way through. I don’t know if this was intentional but just something that I noticed that I couldn’t quit get the hang off. I would still suggest giving it a read if you enjoyed To Kill A Mocking Bird but if you haven’t read the first one she wrote then you need to read that one first or you will be completely lost.

All in all I loved To Kill A Mocking Bird it was really well written and you really got the feel for the characters, but I am afraid to say I was a little let down by her second book although I am glad that I can say I have read it

CharlotteSamantha

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4 COMMENTS

  • Emily

    I read a post on another blog about a month back that explains how Watchman is actually the original, very early draft of To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee’s editors told her they’d prefer it to be written a certain way and changes (like the ages of the characters etc) were made before release. Around 2010 someone in control of Harper Lee’s assets came across the draft and later decided to release it mostly as is, so that might explain why Watchman was a bit harder to get into/all over the place 🙂

    Emily x

  • charlottesroad

    To Kill a Mockingbird is definitely one of my favourite books, and I’m so glad I read it on my own terms rather than as part of my GCSE syllabus! I’m really intrigued by Go Set a Watchman – thanks for this review 🙂 x
    Charlotte’s Road

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