Saturday 16 July 2016

Go Set A Watchman Not Great

I don't know if it was a case of my expectations being too high due to the first book being so good but i have just finished Harper Lee's 'Go Set A Watchman' and to be polite to the late author, it's not great. 
The first half of the book is so ponderous that it was only the thought that it had to get better that i stayed with it, unfortunately it continued to plod along without particularly going anywhere until an overlong, cliche ridden final dialogue between Scout and her Uncle Jack with regards to why her father, along with her home-town, had become a hotbed of racism, put it out of it's misery. 
I know there was some controversy over whether Harper Lee was cajoled into releasing the book in the first place and after reading it, i agree with those who say that it probably should not have been released.
Although it is slow paced, laborious and the dialogue clunky, 'Go Set A Watchman' is not a terrible book but it is not a very good one either and my acid book test is would i add it to my list of books to read again, and that answer is firmly no.
If you are a fan of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' then skirting this novel wouldn't necessarily be a bad move as i assume literary history will quickly forget it also, or rather i hope so for Harper Lee's sake.  

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