JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

From Harper Lee comes a landmark new novel set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch – ‘Scout’ – returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt.

Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humor and effortless precision – a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context and new meaning to an American classic.

This is definitely one of the most highly anticipated novels of 2015, and despite my initial concerns, reading it did not change my opinion of To Kill A Mockingbird. This novel is set two decades after To Kill A Mockingbird finishes – same characters, different society. What this novel does most is add depth to Harper Lee’s earlier novel. Scout has grown up to be proud and defiant and – like most people in their 20s – she thinks she knows everything and feels entitled to make her opinion known to others.

Structurally, I didn’t like this book. There are a lot of flashbacks to the time period between when To Kill a Mockingbird is set and when Go Set A Watchman is set. Sometimes there’d be whole chapters that tell a story from ten years earlier. Sometimes there’d be a couple of pages where Scout remembers an incident or scenario from earlier in her life, but then she’ll switch back to the current setting. This was quite confusing, and I’m not sure I liked it. Although it was interesting to read about these stories and it DID add a lot of depth to not only Scout’s character but also to the others (Atticus, Dr. Finch etc), it felt like a tangent.

Harper Lee seems to jolt around between events. The novel felt like it was going around in circles, until the final 50 pages when Scout and Atticus really explore their relationship and Scout confronts her father over what’s bothering her: Atticus is now a racist and it appears that he is not quite ready for equality within the South.

I had to re-read quite a few chapters because I’d get to the end of a chapter and although I followed the story, I was sure I’d misunderstood the real meaning behind that section. This is both a testament to Harper Lee’s lyrical writing but evidence of the hazy nature of the storytelling.

The final 50 pages are the most significant, naturally, but I think it took too long to get there. Perhaps it’s because I recently read To Kill A Mockingbird and adored the realistic progression of events and the chronological telling of events. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t think it was necessary to include all of the flashbacks. Or perhaps I’m picking a fight with this book because it is and always will be impossible to top To Kill A Mockingbird.

Harper Lee was never going to be able to match the literary brilliance of To Kill A Mockingbird, but this novel helps us further understand both Scout and Atticus, and also the social relations between white and black people in the South during that time period.

I recommend you read or re-read To Kill A Mockingbird before reading Go Set A Watchman.

My Score: 6/10
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We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

What if you grew up to realise that your father had used your childhood as an experiment?

Rosemary doesn’t talk very much, and about certain things she’s silent. She had a sister, Fern, her whirlwind other half, who vanished from her life in circumstances she wishes she could forget. And it’s been ten years since she last saw her beloved older brother Lowell.

Now at college, Rosemary starts to see that she can’t go forward without going back, back to the time when, aged five, she was sent away from home to her grandparents and returned to find Fern gone.

I liked this book, but I didn’t love this book. I finished it, but I didn’t finish it eagerly. It was more a case of ‘well I’ll finish it because it’s not a long book and it was nominated for the Man Booker and I’m actually almost at the end’.

The plot was a little slow and dull and kept jumping back and forth between past and present so much that I often lost track of where I was up to. I didn’t care for the characters as much as I should. Rosemary seemed too distant from the reader and I couldn’t relate to her at all. She is weak and comes across as whiny. Although the author unveils so many issues surrounding animal cruelty and animal/human dynamic, the characters weren’t strong enough for me to enjoy the story.

On the front of the book, there’s a quote about how there’s an amazing ‘twist’ in this book. What you don’t realise is that this twist comes 1/3 of the way through the novel and not at the end of it. So the only part in the novel where you’re actually intrigued enough to keep reading is when that twist is revealed. But then after another 50 pages, you’re bored again with the plot and the rest of the novel is just slow and there’s not enough drive for the reader to want to keep going.

I don’t regret reading this novel because the plot is unique, but it didn’t engage me enough to reread it or recommend that others read it. Harsh, but true.

My Score: 5/10
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The Children Act by Ian McEwan

Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. She is fiercely intelligent, well respected, and deeply immersed in the nuances of her particular field of law. Often the outcome of a case seems simple from the outside, the course of action to ensure a child’s welfare obvious. But the law requires more rigor than mere pragmatism, and Fiona is expert in considering the sensitivities of culture and religion when handing down her verdicts.

But Fiona’s professional success belies domestic strife. Her husband, Jack, asks her to consider an open marriage and, after an argument, moves out of their house. His departure leaves her adrift, wondering whether it was not love she had lost so much as a modern form of respectability; whether it was not contempt and ostracism she really fears. She decides to throw herself into her work, especially a complex case involving a seventeen-year-old boy whose parents will not permit a lifesaving blood transfusion because it conflicts with their beliefs as Jehovah’s Witnesses. But Jack doesn’t leave her thoughts, and the pressure to resolve the case—as well as her crumbling marriage—tests Fiona in ways that will keep readers thoroughly enthralled until the last stunning page.

I really wanted to like this short novel because it’s written by Ian McEwan, but truthfully, I found it slow and dry.

The main character seems a little devoid of emotion, and maybe that’s the point (her husband wants her blessing to have an affair). But when she meets a child whose parents refuse a life-saving because of their religious beliefs, she still seems to have the personality of a stone.

The story weaves between the apparent breakdown of her marriage and the court case, and the most interesting and engaging part of the entire novel is the during the court case when she has to decide and justify her decision about forcing the boy to have a blood transfusion. Apart from that, the story just seems to plod along with short dialogue and a bit too much description.

The good thing about this novel is that it’s only 200 pages, so it’s easy to finish quite quickly. I’d recommend this novel to literary readers and McEwan fans. As for everybody else, keep in mind that this novel is good and it’s well written, but it’s not a page-turner – I could easily put it down for three days and pick it up again and not have it concern me. This book exists for the literary prose and the moral themes it unearths, not for the thrilling plot or interesting and relatable characters.

My Score: 5/10
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Heat and Light by Ellen Van Neerven

In this award-winning work of fiction, Ellen van Neerven takes her readers on a journey that is mythical, mystical and still achingly real.

Over three parts, she takes traditional storytelling and gives it a unique, contemporary twist. In ‘Heat’, we meet several generations of the Kresinger family and the legacy left by the mysterious Pearl. In ‘Water’, a futuristic world is imagined and the fate of a people threatened. In ‘Light’, familial ties are challenged and characters are caught between a desire for freedom and a sense of belonging.

Heat and Light presents an intriguing collection while heralding the arrival of an exciting new talent in Australian writing.

This book has such a beautiful cover, and the writing inside is lyrical and imaginative and visual. Ellen has done a wonderful job of capturing the socio-economic environment of her characters, and through different stories, she captures her characters’ personalities and vulnerabilities.

I read another reviewer describe this book as “slow-burning”, and it’s an extremely accurate way to summarise the three stories: Heat, Water and Light. Each section of the book has small chapters that all contribute to an overarching storyline. The characters all seem disjointed from each other, and lost. Ellen Van Neerven’s storytelling stitches them together temporarily in order to present their story to the reader. And then the section ends, and we are thrust into a different story.

This book is heartbreaking, but from character faults and character actions, not from some major event. This book draws upon Indigenous themes, and illustrates them with subtly and fluidity. Ellen Van Neerven has a real skill for flowing writing, and draws upon very little dialogue to do so.

Water was probably my least favourite of the three sections. Ellen mixed lyrical, literary writing with a speculative setting, and as a result, the story kind of dragged. It took a while to get going, and wasn’t as vibrant or intriguing as her other stories.

I’d recommend this novel to literary readers, and also to lovers of Australian literature. This won the 2013 David Unaipon Award and is wonderfully written.

My Score: 9/10
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To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior – to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos.

Who else is re-reading this ahead of the sequel release? Who else is so excited that Go Set a Watchman is coming out soon? The day it’s released, I’ll be outside the bookstore yelling ‘just take all my money’ and buying the first copy I see. Because this book is brilliant, and after 50-odd years, Harper Lee is expected to produce an equally-superb sequel.

First of all, this book is nothing like how I remember when I read it in Grade 10. True, I didn’t want to read it in Grade 10 because I was forced to read it in school, and we all know that if a child is forced to read something, they won’t enjoy it.

I remember this book being all about the court case for the alleged rape of a white girl by a black man. And although this case is mentioned a few times ahead of the court case, the trial doesn’t actually start until pretty much the final 50 pages of the book.

I feel like if this book wasn’t written by Harper Lee, and an author right now thought about writing it, the court case would start in the first 50 pages. It seems that with the current fiction market in the publishing industry, the book has to ‘grab the reader in the first chapter’. And this does help. BUT what To Kill a Mockingbird actually does in the first 250 pages is much more. It establishes setting and social and racial interrelations. It establishes the relationship between Scout and her brother and her father. It highlights their family values and their respect for black people. It also introduces a melancholic but scary atmosphere. The book seems dark and ominous and you worry for the characters – you worry more in the first half of the book than towards the end of the book when Scout and her brother are attacked (spoilers, sorry, but if you haven’t yet read this book, what have you been doing for the past 50 years?).

The dialogue is consistent and the characters have depth. Atticus is not overly affectionate, but is an inspirational father figure in literature. This book is just as good a re-read as it is the first time you pick it up. And it’s not overly long, so hurry up and read it before the sequel comes out.

My Score: 10/10
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