Let me start of by saying
that originally I was planning to wait a while before I was going to read and
review Go Set a Watchman. However,
much like J.R. Ward’s The Bourbon Kings,
I was simply too excited to wait until I got to the point on my reading
list/schedule where I had originally planned on reading and reviewing Go Set a Watchman to read it. Plus, I
kept coming across other people who were talking about the book, especially my
Facebook friends, and seeing them all talk about the book really made me want
to know what they were talking about, so I decided to go ahead and read the
book now.
I should probably mention
that I decided to read To Kill a
Mockingbird again in preparation for reading and reviewing Go Set a Watchman after reading a lot of
comments from my Facebook friends where they talked about how they thought that
Go Set a Watchman felt like a rough
draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. I
hadn’t read To Kill a Mockingbird since
I was in the ninth grade, and I was either 15 or 16 years old at that time. I’m
28 now, so I definitely needed a refresher on the book. I’m really glad that I
decided to do that because as I was reading To
Kill a Mockingbird again, I realized that I remembered next to none of the
details about the actual plot of To Kill
a Mockingbird. What I remembered the most about To Kill a Mockingbird over the years were the themes and moral
lessons that were explored in the book; that being said, here are my thoughts
on Go Set a Watchman.
Right off the bat, I have to
say that I have incredibly mixed feelings about Go Set a Watchman. On the one hand, when I was reading To Kill a Mockingbird again, I found
myself constantly being annoyed by Jean-Louise “Scout” Finch, but I absolutely
loved seeing the person that she had become as an adult in Go Set a Watchman. I’m going to go right ahead and say that I’ll be
referring to her as Jean-Louise in this review, because I felt like the
characters rarely called her “Scout” in the book, she’s an adult in this book,
and “Scout” really does seem like a childhood nickname to me.
What I liked the most about
Jean-Louise in Go Set a Watchman is
that she really came across as being an incredibly strong-willed young woman,
but she still had a vulnerable side to her, which is something that I really
appreciate about this book. The way she was written in Go Set a Watchman felt very consistent with how she was written as
a child in To Kill a Mockingbird,
while also showing how she’s grown and matured now that she’s an adult. It
would have felt rather disappointing if she was written in such a way that made
her seem like a completely different person in this book. However, I’d be lying
if I said that I hadn’t thought that Jean-Louise was rather annoying at times
in To Kill a Mockingbird when I was
reading it again. The thing that made Jean-Louise seem really annoying to me at
times in To Kill a Mockingbird is
that while I really liked that she was strong-willed child, her strong-willed
and assertive nature often times made her come across as a major brat who was
prone to throwing temper tantrums. I felt like that aspect of Jean-Louise’s personality
was handled a lot better in Go Set a
Watchman though.
However, while I really
liked the fact that Jean-Louise was a strong-willed and assertive young woman
in this book, I felt like it also led to her kind of being a bitch at times to
her friend, Henry Clinton. It was very clear that Henry interested in having a
romantic relationship with her rather than just being friends with her like
Jean-Louise wanted them to be. While I can definitely appreciate the fact that
she told Henry at one point in the book that she had absolutely no interest in them
having a romantic relationship with each other, let alone any interest in
marrying him, instead of leading him on and letting him think that she might be
interested in him romantically, she definitely could have turned him down much
more gently than she did.
The fact that it’s a fairly well
known fact at this point that Harper Lee originally wrote Go Set a Watchman before she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird definitely made reading this book a very
interesting experience for me. It also makes Go Set a Watchman somewhat challenging for me to review, because
unless Lee does an interview or releases some kind of statement at some point,
I don’t really have any way of knowing whether or not she made any changes or revisions
to Go Set a Watchman over the years.
As such, I’m trying to be somewhat lenient when it comes to how critical I am
in terms of my critique of the book. One particular aspect of the book that
really made me wonder about how much Harper Lee had worked on revising the book
over the years, or if she had worked on revising and polishing it at all over
the years is the fact that it was established that Jean-Louise’s brother,
Jeremy, or “Jem” as he was referred to in To
Kill a Mockingbird, had apparently died from the same heart condition that
their mother had died from. The way that the fact that Jem had died was
established really upset me since the mention of Jem’s death felt like nothing
more than a drive by comment. While Jem hadn’t been the primary protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird, I definitely felt
like Harper Lee should have given the mention of Jem’s death more attention and
respect than she did since he was a character in a book that’s widely regarded
as a literary classic. The way that Jem’s death was established really made me
wonder if Harper Lee hadn’t originally meant for the character Jem to be all
that important.
One of the biggest problems
that I have with this book is that while I was reading it again, I felt like it
really lacked direction and focus. The story just seemed to kind of wander
aimlessly for a large portion of the book, if you ask me. I was constantly
wondering what the point of the book was supposed to be. I’ll admit that I
found myself frequently asking that question about To Kill a Mockingbird when I was reading it again. Ultimately I
came to the conclusion that To Kill a
Mockingbird is a coming of age story that had a lot of other themes and
moral lessons that were conveyed throughout the book, especially since it takes
place over a span of three years. As I was reading Go Set a Watchman, I found myself wondering if it was also supposed
to be a coming of age story to a certain degree. However, the problem with that
thinking is that Jean-Louise isn’t a kid any more in this book; she’s a young
adult, so Go Set a Watchman doesn’t
really fit the definition of a coming of age story, if you ask me.
I should probably mention
that it has been a few weeks since I finished reading Go Set a Watchman, and one part of the book that I just can’t seem
to stop thinking about is the part where the story flashes back to a period of
time when Jean-Louise was in the sixth grade. In the flashback, it was
established that after talking to some girls at school, Jean-Louise came to the
conclusion that not only can women get pregnant simply by kissing a guy, that
she herself had gotten pregnant after a guy had stuck his tongue in her mouth
when he kissed her. While teen pregnancy still isn’t exactly treated like it’s
no big deal today’s society, being a single mom, especially when it’s a teenage
girl who’s pregnant, was obviously considered much more socially taboo back
then. That’s probably why Jean-Louise was trying to be discrete as possible
when she was trying to learn about pregnancy and was planning to kill herself
around the time she thought that the baby was going to be born. Of course she
wasn’t actually pregnant and Henry stopped her from going through with killing
herself, since he showed up just as she was about to jump off the water tower.
Henry told her that she wasn’t pregnant and that she couldn’t get pregnant
simply from kissing a guy.
This part of the book
utterly baffles me for so many reasons. First off, I’m going to assume that she
probably wasn’t continually gaining weight during the period of time that she
thought that she was pregnant. That alone should have been a dead giveaway to
Jean-Louise that she wasn’t pregnant. Second, it seems pretty stupid of her to
think that she would give birth to a baby during the night while she was
sleeping. The pain of the contractions and the baby being born would have
definitely woken her up once she was in full-blown labor. Perhaps Jean-Louise
wasn’t aware of the fact that giving birth is supposed to be very painful, but I
honestly don’t know where she got the idea that she would give birth to the
baby while she was sleeping. Finally, this part of the book really showed me that
Jean-Louise, along with all of the other kids that she went to school with were
in desperate need of a good sex ed program.
However, since I’m not an
expert on history, I’m going to go ahead and guess that sex ed wasn’t something
that was regularly being taught in schools during the period of time that the
events of Go Set a Watchman take
place. That being said, I’m still not sure what purpose including that
particular subplot served the book as a whole. If you ask me, the inclusion of
that subplot is one of the things that I think adds credence to the opinion
that Go Set a Watchman feels like a
rough draft of To Kill a Mockingbird.
That entire subplot comes across as something that Lee included in early drafts
of Go Set a Watchman, but was unsure
of how to tie it into the overall narrative of the book, and she simply never
removed the subplot from the story in subsequent drafts of the book for one
reason or another.
While Go Set a Watchman doesn’t really fit the definition of a coming of
age story, I feel like the things that happened to Jean-Louise throughout the
book were necessary for her growth and development, both as a fictional
character and as a young adult, especially when it comes to her relationship
with her father, Atticus. I say this because when I was reading To Kill a Mockingbird again in
preparation for reading and reviewing Go
Set a Watchman, I found myself thinking that Jean-Louise seemed to almost
worship Atticus and treat pretty much anything he said or thought as a gospel
to a somewhat detrimental degree. The idea that not everything Atticus did,
said or thought was right seemed to completely escape Jean-Louise in To Kill a Mockingbird. I thought that it
was at least somewhat understandable and okay in To Kill a Mockingbird since she was a kid in that book, but at the
start of Go Set a Watchman,
Jean-Louise still seemed to worship Atticus a bit too much. It really left me
thinking that she was in desperate need of moment or a series of moments that
would force her to see how harmful and dysfunctional her worshiping Atticus
truly was.
Jean-Louise discovering that
both Atticus and Henry had joined the White Citizens’ Council definitely helped
facilitate her having the revelation that Atticus isn’t perfect and that she
needs be better about really thinking for herself. Jean-Louise basically went
on the warpath after she discovered Atticus and Henry’s involvement with the
White Citizens’ Council, and she got into a big fight with Atticus. The whole
thing ultimately led to Jean-Louise talking to Uncle Jack about everything that
had happened. I definitely agree with the comments Uncle Jack made about how
she had essentially fastened her conscience to Atticus’ at some point. While I
definitely didn’t think of it in those exact words when I was reading To Kill a Mockingbird again, sometimes
I wondered if Jean-Louise/Scout was even capable of having her own thoughts and
opinions about things without talking to Atticus first.
While I agree with a lot of
the things Uncle Jack said to Jean-Louise, I definitely have a few issues with
the way their conversation played out. One of the biggest problems that I have
with Jean-Louise and Uncle Jack’s conversation is the part where Uncle Jack
outright calls her a bigot. The reason it bothers me is that it’s a major pet
peeve of mine when fictional characters make a big pronouncement about another
character in the book, even if it does help move the story forward. For the
record, it also really bothers me when people do this in real life, too.
It just seems rather
presumptuous of people, or in this case fictional characters, to make major
pronouncements about someone else. Plus, even in the hands of a good writer,
moments like that pretty much always come across as rather awkward and clumsy
in my opinion. I should probably mention that I had the same problem with the first
book in the Crossfire book series by
Sylvia Day, Bared to You, when it
comes to the part of the book where Gideon Cross tells the protagonist of the
book, Eva Tramell, that she’s a submissive and that he wants to have a D/S
relationship with her. For the record, I do think that Sylvia Day is a great
writer and I really enjoyed the first two books in the Crossfire series, and I also plan to read and review the rest of
the series at some point. However, if you read my review for the second book in
the series, Reflected in You, it should be pretty obvious that I didn’t
enjoy it as much as I liked Bared to You, but I digress.
It also bothers me that the conversation
between Jean-Louise and Uncle Jack ultimately led to Go Set a Watchman having a rather rushed resolution as a whole.
Jean-Louise suddenly deciding to make a date with Henry raised more questions
than answers regarding the future of their relationship for me personally. Given
the fact that she had rejected him in an incredibly blunt manner earlier in the
book, I had to wonder how genuine Jean-Louise’s feelings were when she asked
him out at the end of the book. That being said, as mixed as my feelings
regarding Jean-Louise and Uncle Jack’s conversation are, I do like that part of
Jean-Louise’s reaction to him calling her a bigot was to look up the word
“bigot” in the dictionary. I thought that was a nice touch to the scene. As
much as the way the conversation Jean-Louise and Uncle Jack had about
Jean-Louise being a bigot in Jack’s eyes played out bugs me, their conversation
really made me think about people displaying bigotry towards others in real
life and how I would define the word “bigot”. I definitely think it’s very
important for a writer to make others think when people read their work, and
much like To Kill a Mockingbird,
Harper Lee definitely gives the reader a lot to think about with Go Set a Watchman.
However, while I think it’s
a great that Go Set a Watchman gives
people a lot to think about, there were times when I felt like Harper Lee was
throwing too many ideas at the reader that weren’t all properly developed,
fleshed out and polished. The whole thing with the aforementioned subplot where
Jean-Louise mistakenly believed that she had gotten pregnant when she was
younger is definitely one of the first examples that I can think of regarding
this particular problem that the book has. In my experience, both in terms of
writing my own stories and reading other people’s stories, I think that
sometimes people try to pack a lot of ideas and concepts into early drafts of a
story that they’re considering featuring in the story as they continue to write
subsequent drafts of a book or a story that they may or may not include in the
story when they eventually write the final draft. I’m certainly guilty of having
done that in the past when I used to write lots of stories, but I digress. I’m
wondering if the fact that Go Set a
Watchman seems to have a variety of underdeveloped ideas in the book is why
a lot of people have said that the book feels life a rough draft of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Perhaps this will seem like
a bizarre thing to mention, but one thing that I’ve thought about a lot when it
comes to Go Set a Watchman and the
fact that Harper Lee originally wrote it before she wrote and published To Kill a Mockingbird really got me
thinking about the fact that before the TV show The Big Bang Theory premiered in September of 2007, an unaired
pilot for the show was shot. I should probably mention that the unaired pilot can
be found online, and I’ve watched it. For those who aren’t familiar with the unaired
pilot, the original pilot featured an almost entirely different cast and group
of characters with Leonard and Sheldon being the only characters and Johnny
Galecki (Leonard) and Jim Parsons (Sheldon) being the only cast members that
remained a part of the show once it premiered on TV. Plus, the writing for
Sheldon, and the set design for Leonard and Sheldon’s apartment was also
somewhat different.
The reason I mention that is
because it’s obvious that the executives at CBS saw that The Big Bang Theory had potential to be a good show when the show
was originally created with its original cast despite the fact that the
original pilot apparently didn’t test very well. Since the original pilot
didn’t test well, the executives at CBS obviously decided that the show needed
some retooling. I definitely agree with that assessment, and I think retooling
the show definitely paid off since the show became a huge hit, but I digress.
Going back to my thoughts on Go Set a
Watchman versus To Kill a Mockingbird,
I don’t know what prompted Harper Lee to set aside Go Set a Watchman and write To
Kill a Mockingbird instead. Maybe her editor or someone else encouraged her
to completely rework her idea, or perhaps she simply decided to set aside Go Set a Watchman and write To Kill a Mockingbird instead.
Regardless of what led her
to write and publish To Kill a
Mockingbird instead of publishing Go
Set a Watchman back in 1960, it’s clear that the decision paid off like the
decision to retool The Big Bang Theory paid
off since To Kill a Mockingbird ended
up becoming a beloved literary classic. For the record, I definitely don’t
think of The Big Bang Theory as a TV
masterpiece, and at the risk of going off on a complete tangent, I personally
think that the current season, season nine, has been a major disappointment so
far. I’m even considering ditching the show altogether, but I digress. I only used The Big Bang Theory as an example in
this case since the development of the show was somewhat complicated, but it
ultimately became a huge hit. Similarly, the details regarding the publication
history of To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman is also somewhat
complicated since Harper originally wrote Go
Set a Watchman first, but set it aside in order to write and publish To Kill a Mockingbird instead, and To Kill a Mockingbird went on to become
a literary classic.
All things considered, I
really liked Go Set a Watchman for
the most part; however, I don’t think it lives up to To Kill a Mockingbird and its status as a literary classic. However,
I really enjoyed seeing what Jean-Louise was like as an adult, and a lot of the
events that take place in Go Set a
Watchman and the character development Jean-Louise undergoes throughout the
course of the book definitely feels like the natural next step and the next
chapter in terms of her development as a character. The biggest problem that I
think the book has is that the story really lacks direction, focus and proper
development at times, which is why I think some people have said that Go Set a Watchman feels like a rough
draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. As I
said earlier, there are definitely some sections of the book that left me
wondering what purpose they served the story as a whole.
While there are things that
I definitely like about the ending of Go
Set a Watchman, some aspects of the book’s ending felt too rushed and left
too many unanswered questions. It’s definitely great to have Harper Lee publish
another book after all these years. However, as follow-up to To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman unfortunately doesn’t
quite live up to its predecessor or come across as a book that’s destined to be
regarded as a literary classic.
One last thing that I’d like
to mention is that much like I’ve done with almost all of the books that I’ve
reviewed at this point, I bought the audiobook version of Go Set a Watchman, which
was preformed by Reese Witherspoon. I
thought that Reese Witherspoon did a phenomenal job of reading the book, and I
would definitely recommend checking out the audiobook version of Go Set a Watchman if you haven’t
already.
That being said, my final
score for Go Set a Watchman is 7 out
of 10.
