Go Set a Watchman

De: Harper Lee

Narrado por: Reese Witherspoon

Go Set a Watchman is set during the mid-1950s and features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father Atticus. She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand both her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood. An instant classic.

Reseñas de la Crítica

A new work, and a pleasure, revelation and genuine literary event…Go Set a Watchman shakes the settled view of both an author and her novel…This publication intensifies the regret that Harper Lee published so little. (Mark Lawson)

Go Set a Watchman is the more radical, ambitious and politicised of the two novels Lee has now published…It has contemporary relevance where Mockingbird is safely sealed off as a piece of American history…It does not undermine Mockingbird but it makes a reassessment of that story absolutely necessary…It is a book of enormous literary interest…Beguiling and distinctive, and reminiscent of Mockingbird…Go Set a Watchman can’t be dismissed as literary scraps from Lee’s’ imagination. It has too much integrity for that. (Arifa Akbar)

More edgy and thought provoking [than To Kill a Mockingbird] … It has a power to it beyond being a mere historical curio or more lit crit material for Harper Lee studies… Eccentric characters are brightly drawn. There is Lee’s trademark warmth, some droll lines and the sense of place and time is strong…[It has] a surprisingly provocative message — don’t airily dismiss the prejudices of others, try to understand them. (Robbie Millen)

The flashes of lyrical genius and ability to evoke the intensity of childhood play that come to fruition in To Kill a Mockingbird are in evidence…It’s nowhere near the novel Mockingbird is. It is much better than that…What Watchman tells us, and tells us rather powerfully, is that racism is not confined to people who are so clearly not like us…Watchman is for grown-ups. It asks serious questions about what racism is. And it comes at a time when American desperately needs a grown-up conversation about race. (Erica Wagner)

I’m happy to report that most of the caveats and conspiracy theories surrounding Go Set a Watchman melt away as you read the opening chapters and reacquaint yourself with that beguiling Harper Lee narrative style — warm, sardonic, amused by male folly and social pretension, wryly funny, a sassy Southern voice, Mark Twain with a dash of Katharine Hepburn. (John Walsh)

We have travelled into the past and returned to find that our present is not quite the same as we left it. Atticus Finch will never again be the white knight we once thought him. And yet the mockingbird still sings — no longer a song of innocence, but maybe one of experience; a song that combines sorrow, forgiveness — and, ultimately, a kind of hope. (Joanne Harris)

There are some flashes of genius…My favourite scene is at “a coffee”, where our rebellious Scout must make small talk with a bunch of married former acquaintances whom she deliberately hasn’t seen since school. Lee’s précis of their vapid conversation is hilarious, feminist and wickedly modern. (Katy Guest)

Not what I expected

As a book on its own, this is no doubt a good work. However, reading it directly after reading TKAM, I did not enjoy it.
I feel Atticus' character is too different from the Atticus in TKAM and some of the facts and events Scout remembers are different from TKAM. This, together with the fact that some of the passages are the same word for word in both books, leads me to believe that this is indeed an earlier draft of TKAM and not it s sequel.

... in which Scout grows up

Amidst the plethora of discussion (mostly negative) about this title over recent weeks it would be easy to lose sight of the value of this book and the skill of Ms Lee. I've read suggestions that she didn't write it (rubbish, in my opinion), that it's a big Murdoch publicity stunt (possible, but so what) and that it is literary dross. Addressing the last of these, I strongly disagree!
One reviewer said it was not published earlier because it was no good; it had too many semi-colons - the last refuge of the literary insolvent. I'm not sure if that reviewer has re-visited TKAM recently, but if they had, they would see dashes galore and a reasonable dosage of semi-colons. Apparently that did not affect the literary merit of the earlier title.
Someone else said that this is a blunt instrument to convey Ms Lee's smooth message about race. I'm not sure if the reviewer considered that this title is intended to be more confronting that TKAM. If it was, then on that scale, no doubt it was a successful attempt.
A reviewer on this site suggests that its cross-references to TKAM are inaccurate. Some of them are. However, given the elapse of time between the events in each book, these inconsistencies might be seen as merely a doting daughter's rose coloured memories and not the truth, thereby re-enforcing the underlying message of the book that when you set out to sanctify the truth might be lost.
I could go on, but it is not necessary.
In my view you can put aside the critics (me included) and just listen to the book. Like me, you might love it for what it is.
It is a story about a little girl becoming an adult; of seeing things in greys and not just black or white. It is about the realisation that our heroes are mostly human; that there comes a time to accept that no matter where North lies on your moral compass, it is still your responsibility to walk in the correct direction. Mostly for me, this is a story about a very real love and respect between father and daughter. It is an important book for that as well as the racial issues that it identifies (and which still bedevil society today, 50 years plus after this text was written).
I felt that the book was the better for being read by someone as accomplished as Reese Witherspoon. It was a perfect read to my ear.
I will be listening to this again, and often.

Loved this book and the way it was read!

What did you love best about Go Set a Watchman?

The follow on to "To kill a mocking bird", one of my favourite books.,and the follow on to the characters' lives.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Go Set a Watchman?

Scott's arrival back home!

Have you listened to any of Reese Witherspoon’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, but keen to.

I feel let down

I find it hard to believe that Harper Lee really gave the OK to publish this book. It should have stayed in that safety deposit box where they found it. The book refers to things that happened in, To Kill a Mockingbird, but it misreferences the events. Other parts seem copy and pasted from the book.
If this book was not from Harper Lee, and was not riding on the coattails of such an iconic book, then I'd say it was OK, but slow. However, it is a book DOES have big shoes to fill, and because of that, it's a let down. Not only that, I feel it dishonors the book that came before it. This book should have remained unpublished. I feel this book is clearly a money grab by the publisher and should've been reedited to at least referenced its predecessor correctly.

unexpectedly unlike Scout's voice.

struggled to finish. What unbelievably judgemental. Hot at all how Atticus Finch raised his children.