Bright Young Things discussion

This is a bit outside our time frame, since the new novel is set in the 1950s - but the first chapter of Go Set a Watchman, the new novel by Harper Lee, is now available to read online at the Guardian's website:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-i...

I've just read it (after turning off the annoying ambient music!) and am now very excited - the dry, assured writing style has me hooked. I'm wishing I'd read To Kill a Mockingbird (which does fall into our period!) more recently. Despite all the controversy over the publication of this sequel, from the extract it looks well worth reading.

Thanks very much for sharing!

Hope you enjoy it :) I've just ordered it from the library, and also Mockingbird so I can revisit that first!

I've been debating about reading it. Not sure if she wanted people to read it. It seemed as though she didn't really want to publish it. Although it sounded as though she had a good time at the pre-release and was signing books. She doesn't hear very well and I'm not sure about her sight - sounds a lot like my mother - and so hard to tell how with it people are.

So I am undecided.

I know there has been controversy and I wasn't sure whether to read it either, but given the quality of the writing in this extract I definitely want to now.

I'm just rereading Mockingbird now and am really enjoying it - I'd forgotten just how good it is. Beautifully readable and such a convincing portrayal of childhood.

Just returning to this thread to say that I've now read Go Set a Watchman and was disappointed by it after loving that first chapter- it really seems to be a weak first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird.

However, I found it interesting to read it straight after 'Mockingbird' and see how the characters evolved. I don't think it's worth reading as a novel in its own right, but I'm glad its publication led me to revisit 'Mockingbird'.

Here's my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Judy wrote: "Just returning to this thread to say that I've now read Go Set a Watchman and was disappointed by it after loving that first chapter- it really seems to be a weak first draft of [bo..."

Thanks Judy, that's a really useful review which sets the new book in context. I've heard varying reports but your assessment clarifies where this second book lies. I'd heard it described as a prequel which didn't sound right.

Thanks, Ruth - I suppose it's sort of a sequel because a lot of it comes later, and a prequel in that it was written first!

I've just found an excellent review of it at the New York Times Books site, which does talk about the whole plot.

Judy wrote: "Just returning to this thread to say that I've now read Go Set a Watchman and was disappointed by it after loving that first chapter- it really seems to be a weak first draft of [bo..."

Thanks for sacrificing yourself (or your reading time anyway) for us and reporting back. Maybe I'll read or listen to it one day and accept it as a first draft of a magnificent book. That's why they have editors. To send writers back to rewrite and revise.

Thanks, Jan - if you do read it, I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Just read another piece at the New York Times which looks at how Lee worked with her editor, Tay Hohoff, to do all that rewriting and revising - this piece does give the plot away, though.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/boo...

Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, dies aged 89


http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016...

Harper Lee, whose 1961 novel To Kill a Mockingbird became a national institution and the defining text on the racial troubles of the American deep south, has died at the age of 89.

Lee, or Nelle as she was known to those close to her, had lived for several years in a nursing home less than a mile from the house in which she had grown up in Monroeville, Alabama – the setting for the fictional Maycomb of her famous book. The town’s mayor, Mike Kennedy, confirmed the author’s death.

Until last year, Lee had been something of a one-book literary wonder. To Kill a Mockingbird, her 1961 epic narrative about small-town lawyer Atticus Finch’s battle to save the life of a black resident threatened by a racist mob, sold more than 40 million copies around the world and earned her a Pulitzer prize. George Bush awarded her the presidential medal of freedom in 2007.

But from the moment Mockingbird was published to almost instant success the author consistently avoided public attention and insisted that she had no intention of releasing further works. That self-imposed purdah ended abruptly when, amid considerable controversy, it was revealed a year ago that a second novel had been discovered which was published as Go Set a Watchman in July 2015.

Lee was born in Monroeville in 1926 and grew up under the stresses of segregation. As a child she shared summers with another aspiring writer, Truman Capote, who annually came to stay in the house next door to hers and who later invited her to accompany him to Holcomb, Kansas to help him research his groundbreaking 1966 crime book In Cold Blood.

Capote informed the figure of the young boy Dill in Mockingbird, with his friend the first-person narrator Scout clearly modeled on the childhood Lee herself.

Lee was the youngest child of lawyer Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Finch Lee. Her father acted as the template for Atticus Finch whose resolute courtroom dignity as he struggles to represent a black man Tom Robinson accused of raping a white woman provides the novel’s ethical backbone.

Last year’s publication of Go Set a Watchman obliged bewildered fans of the novel to reappraise the character of Finch. In that novel, which was in fact the first draft of Mockingbird that had been rejected by her publisher, Finch was portrayed as having been a supporter of the South’s Jim Crow laws, saying at one point: “Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and ­churches and theaters?”

Within minutes of the announcement of the novelist’s death, encomiums began to flow. Her literary agent Andrew Nurnberg said in a statement: “We have lost a great writer, a great friend and a beacon of integrity.”

He added: “Knowing Nelle these past few years has been not just an utter delight but an extraordinary privilege. When I saw her just six weeks ago, she was full of life, her mind and mischievous wit as sharp as ever. She was quoting Thomas Moore and setting me straight on Tudor history.”

Michael Morrison, her publisher at HarperCollins US, said: “The world knows Harper Lee was a brilliant writer but what many don’t know is that she was an extraordinary woman of great joyfulness, humility and kindness. She lived her life the way she wanted to- in private- surrounded by books and the people who loved her.”

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, tweeted a quote from Mockingbird: “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

A sad day.