Books to Read Poster No 34

 

This was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

It's a funny thing, but if you'd asked me a couple of weeks ago if I had read this I would have answered 'Yes, but  a long time ago' with great confidence. However as I read it I kept thinking 'I don't remember this bit', and I thought that so often that in the end I was forced to conclude that actually I hadn't read it at all. And I have no idea where the conviction that I had read it before came from. 

Enjoyed is perhaps not the first  word I would use for the experience of reading this because of course it deals with bad sad things,but actually on reflection I have to say that I did enjoy it. It's generally well written, the perspective from the point of view of a nine year old girl is well done and Lee manages not to drop it, which is a feat other writers working form a child's perspective often don't manage. Despite Scout's limited experience of the world the reader is able to see clearly exactly what is going on in the small town of Maycomb, which is full of eccentric but often quite endearing characters; Unendearing characters, and hard lives, are unflinchingly set down too. And there's a vein of humour running through it which lightened the whole dark tale. 

My only problems with it were that the exposure of the town's blind spots and hypocrisy were rather too laboured, and  the morally ambiguous ending, which I felt undermined the whole moral thrust of the book tot hat point; I found that disturbing. 

But overall I would have to declare this a Hit; I'm glad I've (finally, actually) read it.