Breathe To Read

Breathe To Read

Saturday, February 11, 2017

2017 Challenge - Book #15 - Go Set A Watchman

I think I might actually get another 10 books in this month.  We shall see.  Winter break for the kids is coming up, and we are traveling, so it is a toss up.

Today's book is

Go Set A Watchman



It was under the category:  An Author's Final Book

If you have read "To Kill A Mockingbird" - you will know all about this book.  It is a first draft to that book.  In this story, Scout is a 26 year old who lives in New York City.  She returns to Maycomb to visit her aging father, Atticus.  Her brother, Jem, has died.  Her father, in this story, is a racist as is most of the town he lives in.  Atticus is not the father that Scout thought he was, and she isn't sure she can live with that reality.

This book wasn't great.  I don't have much to say about it.  I am glad this didn't come out before To Kill A Mockingbird where Atticus is a hero and a champion among the less fortunate in his town.  Here he is just a man who doesn't think that Black people have as many rights as white people and that they are definitely a lesser people who will never catch up to the white man.  It is terrible.  And the book gets a little ranty about the subject in the end.  To the point I just wanted to finish it because I was so disgusted.

I know I shouldn't be.  I have read many a story with controversial material where people are treated much worse.  (i.e. the several WWII novels I have treasured for their writing).  I think it was BECAUSE of the Atticus we know from To Kill A Mockingbird that it made it hard for me to like this book.

My eldest read To Kill A Mockingbird this year for 8th grade.  Her teacher talked to them about Watchman, and she refuses to read it because she doesn't want to tarnish the picture perfect story she sees with Mockingbird.  And now that I have read this book, I can't blame her.

Stars: 3

1 comment:

  1. I keep circling around this one, not really wanting to read it but feeling as though I should. Maybe this year I'll fit it in somewhere.

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