Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

With so much hype about Go Set A Watchman, I'm going to get right to the point.  It's been years since I read To Kill a Mockingbird, and I remember it fondly.  But please forgive me if I don't recall every minute detail of the story.  For that reason I can read Go Set A Watchman how it was intended, as the first novel.

Jean Louise Finch has left Maycomb County and moved to New York City.  She returns home to visit her aging and arthritic father, Atticus.  What she finds is a slow, Southern way of life, so different from what she's become used to.  Scout always loved home but this time she sees it without the benefit of rose colored glasses.

There's a line in the novel about Atticus, and I'm paraphrasing,  that he made everyone feel like his friend.  He's a highly respected man, living in the south where the roots of segregation run deep.  He knew how to play the game.  Jean Louise uncovered a side of him, he'd never chosen to reveal to his children.  It's called growing up.

I loved this book.  Harper Lee's prose glides across the page effortlessly.  I could feel the hot humid days, snicker at Aunt Alexandra's disgust at Scout's modern ways and sit uncomfortably on the hard church pew.  Jean Louise and Atticus are both strong, vivid characters with or without To Kill a Mockingbird.  The world has waited for more from Miss Lee for decades.  Here it is and in my mind, it was worth waiting for.  

I've Got a Best Seller

Today was book review day in the USA Today.  I love to read their book review.  Today was especially interesting about the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.  It's a novel that's transcended time.  It's also a movie that's done the same.

I found it interesting that Harper Lee never wrote another novel.  Never.  And she's even turned down Oprah for an interview.  The rest of us writers can't wait to be invited by Oprah.  I would never dream of turning her down!  I had a fascinating time on the book page.

And then something else caught my eye.  Something odd, handwritten on the New York Times Bestseller list.  #11 - One Clown Short by Linda C. Wright.

You see Richard gets up much earlier than I.  He gets the paper around four in the morning.  Ginger, also being sound asleep much prefers that she be able to get the paper from the driveway each morning, a habit she learned as a puppy, but Richard enjoys reading without teeth marks.  He reads it and then leaves it in the living room for me.  He snuck me on the list when no one else was looking.

I'm saving the paper from the day I made it onto the bestseller list as all proud writers would.  Maybe 50 years from now one of my novels will be celebrating an anniversary.  Maybe Oprah will be calling me soon after all.   No matter what, in Richard's eyes I'll always be a best seller.