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A review by michaelcattigan
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5.0
This is quite simply exceptional!
5 stars genuinely does not feel to be enough to award it.
The story of Jem and (the somewhat precocious) Scout Finch, children of Atticus, spans a number of years of their lives in their sleepy, comfortable small town America. Whilst a number of challenges and successes trouble the town, there are two overarching storylines: Scout's attempts to tempt the elusive Boo Radley into the world; and Atticus' defence of a local negro accused of raping a white woman.
There is much that could have gone wrong here. Atticus could have come across as being far too good to be true yet beneath his honourable stance, there is a childishness and a delight and sharing in his children's more rambunctious escapades. Scout, who we are told a number of times was born reading, could have become cliched or irritatingly precocious and yet her narrative voice is so beguiling. Dill (who was disappointingly sidelined in the film version) is a wonderful creation inhabiting a world of his own which intersects with Maycomb. The setting could have become distant and simply irrelevant but the genuine humanity of its inhabitants as well as the subtle glancing references to the history in which it is set (the Great Depression, World War 2) make it wholly compelling. Bob Ewell could have become a caricatured bogeyman but his involvement in the story is so glancing and almost tangential that he does work (although he is the weakest part of the story)
Humanity is the word that oozes through this book. It is, in its heart, a celebration of all that humanity can be, the honour and gentleness and truth that resides in the heart of all men despite (or perhaps because of) their flaws.
It has been a while since I last read this (I think as a school book or on the suggestion at least of a school teacher) and it is so good that I lament the years in between in which I have not had the company of Scout, Jem, Dill, Atticus and Boo!
5 stars genuinely does not feel to be enough to award it.
The story of Jem and (the somewhat precocious) Scout Finch, children of Atticus, spans a number of years of their lives in their sleepy, comfortable small town America. Whilst a number of challenges and successes trouble the town, there are two overarching storylines: Scout's attempts to tempt the elusive Boo Radley into the world; and Atticus' defence of a local negro accused of raping a white woman.
There is much that could have gone wrong here. Atticus could have come across as being far too good to be true yet beneath his honourable stance, there is a childishness and a delight and sharing in his children's more rambunctious escapades. Scout, who we are told a number of times was born reading, could have become cliched or irritatingly precocious and yet her narrative voice is so beguiling. Dill (who was disappointingly sidelined in the film version) is a wonderful creation inhabiting a world of his own which intersects with Maycomb. The setting could have become distant and simply irrelevant but the genuine humanity of its inhabitants as well as the subtle glancing references to the history in which it is set (the Great Depression, World War 2) make it wholly compelling. Bob Ewell could have become a caricatured bogeyman but his involvement in the story is so glancing and almost tangential that he does work (although he is the weakest part of the story)
Humanity is the word that oozes through this book. It is, in its heart, a celebration of all that humanity can be, the honour and gentleness and truth that resides in the heart of all men despite (or perhaps because of) their flaws.
It has been a while since I last read this (I think as a school book or on the suggestion at least of a school teacher) and it is so good that I lament the years in between in which I have not had the company of Scout, Jem, Dill, Atticus and Boo!