A review by luminesse
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

3.0

I thought that the first half of the book was good, but that once the protagonist, Jean-Louise, met with her crisis issue, and Uncle Jack and Atticus guided her to a complacent peace (which sounds evil by today's activist ideology but also incorporates a zen understanding that things must progress from evil to good and can't just jump there in a flash), the book as it works its way through its crisis falls apart a bit. I was eager to learn what Harper Lee would assert about the complexities of racial relations in the south in the 1950s, but in reading it it was apparent to me that she wasn't really sure how she wanted to get her character to the understanding she needed to reach at the end of the book. It was obvious the end of the book needed a finessing it never got, being an unfinished, abandoned work. I was definitely intrigued when I heard that this would be a book about the complexities of southern race relations in the ascension of civil rights movement, especially from someone who could speak to us first-hand from the time, as opposed to the "racists bad" tale that many of us have outgrown.

one thing I'll add - did anyone else notice that the rejected book was about a young grown woman with a fierce independence? Not that it never happened in early 1900s literature...

another thing I'll add several days later - the ending is pretty haunting. wondering whether this was Lee's prescription or her warning or something in the middle. Haunting is a good thing.