It's not, I think, at this point a spoiler because it has been all over the press, but what we find out in this novel is that twenty years on from To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus has become a segregationist. there's bad news for anyone who named their child Atticus. How are readers going to feel when they meet him in the new book?

It's hard to let go of characters for which you have great affection, and Atticus Finch is one of those people in literature.

So should we read it as a novel at all, or should we read it as something that will be really useful to academia as a way of informing all kinds of new readings of To Kill a Mockingbird? Should we read it as an early draft of that novel? Should we read it as a completely different draft? It's also not entirely finished. And yet, we know that it was written before To Kill a Mockingbird. Is it a sequel? Is it a prequel? Is it just sort of a companion piece? Is it a working draft? It's set twenty years after the action of To Kill a Mockingbird so in that sense, in terms of the character's lives, it is a sequel. Yes, this is one of the other many quite big questions surrounding this book. There are also questions about what exactly this book is. It's impossible to review the book without all of that in mind. There are some questions about whether Harper Lee really truly wanted it to be published the way it is. And also, there's all this really bizarre back-story that we know about this book suddenly coming to light. Everyone in the world knows To Kill a Mockingbird! There are forty million copies of that book sold. It's actually impossible to do that with this book. It's really important as a reviewer to review a book on its own terms, not based on other things that you might prefer that it had been. Given the love people have for To Kill a Mockingbird and all the advance and current hype about this book was it possible for you to evaluate it as a reviewer independently?īecky Toyne: There has never been a publishing event like this that I can think of, nor will there be again unless J.D. In every newspaper, as soon as you go online, people are commenting on this. Helen Mann: I can't remember this much hype for any book. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the review of Go Set a Watchman.C ontroversy has surrounded its publication, with some raising questions about whether the 89-year-old Lee truly wanted this work published. Day 6 books columnist Becky Toyne takes on Harper Lee's controversial new book Go Set a Watchman, her first book since the beloved To Kill A Mockingbird in 1961.

To kill a watchman