Book Review – Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee #20BooksofSummer2025

About the Book

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch – ‘Scout’ – returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt.

Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past – a journey that can be guided only by one’s conscience.

Format: Hardcover (288 pages) Publisher: William Heinemann
Publication date: 14th July 2015 Genre: Literary Fiction

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My Review

When it was first published, Go Set A Watchman was trailed as the sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird given the events take place around fifteen years after those in To Kill A Mockingbird. Pretty soon, however, it was recognised that Go Set A Watchman was a first draft of a novel written before To Kill A Mockingbird and – like all first drafts – never intended for publication. It can be considered as a ‘first go’ at what eventually would become To Kill A Mockingbird with the narrator changed from an older to a younger Scout.

If, like me, you’ve read To Kill A Mockingbird or watched the film adaptation starring Gregory Peck, it’s difficult not to draw comparisons with that book when reading Go Set A Watchman. Nevertheless I tried to approach Go Set A Watchman as a novel in its own right. I’m not sure I succeeded.

The reader accompanies Jean Louise Finch on one of her periodic visits back to Maycomb, the small town in Alabama where she grew up. She finds things changed: her father Atticus is now crippled with arthritis, her aunt has moved in to be his carer, and Calpurnia, the black woman who acted as her surrogate mother, has left the household. Her childhood friend, Hank, is still in love with her and wants to marry her but she can think of him now only with affection, something she feels is not enough to sustain a marriage. Maycomb’s small town mentality is a stark contrast to Jean Louise’s life in New York and her overriding feeling is of not fitting in.

The backdrop to the book is the civil rights movement. In particular, the attempts by the the NACCP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) to end racial segregation and the disenfranchisement of black people. I confess a lot of the detail about Supreme Court decisions and how this impacted the jurisdiction of individual states went over my head but I can see it would have had relevance to readers at the time.

Through various characters, the author shows us people’s different responses to issues of race: outright hatred and vitriolic abuse, concern about the speed of change and pragmatic acceptance of the status quo. It makes Jean Louise, with her openminded views, feel even more of an outsider. Is she the one who’s wrong?

We get interludes in which Jean Louise recalls events from her childhood, including childish japes with her brother Jem and friends Henry (Hank) and Dill. There are some rather moving moments that demonstrate the challenges of growing up without a mother to guide you through things that only another woman can explain.

The funniest scene was the Coffee Morning which Jean Louise’s aunt arranges to mark her visit. Jean Louise tries to make polite conversation with the women invited but soon realises she has nothing in common with ‘the Newly Weds’, ‘the Diaper Set’, ‘the Light Brigade’ or ‘the Perennial Hopefuls’.

There were things I found difficult to ignore, such as the use of the term ‘Negroes’ to describe black people, although I accept this was common parlance at the time. I must admit I was very much in accord with Jean Louise when she confronts her father about his views on the enfranchisement of black people, which is essentially one day but not yet. On the other hand, perhaps he’s right that Jean Louise being ‘colourblind’ has made her unable to recognise the extent of the racism that black people still face in places like Maycomb.

Go Set A Watchman is a story about change and disillusionment. Jean Louise comes to realise that in regarding her father as her ‘watchman’ or moral compass, she’s absolved herself of the responsibility to be her own ‘watchman’. Her challenge is to accept him as a loving father at the same time as being passionately opposed to his views.

Go Set A Watchman is an interesting insight into the development of Harper Lee as a writer but, if you haven’t already, I’d suggest you read To Kill A Mockingbird and give this one a pass.

Go Set A Watchman is the third book from my 20 Books of Summer 2025 list. Yes, I have a way to go…

About the Author

Nelle Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. The author of the acclaimed To Kill A Mockingbird, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2017 and received numerous other literary awards and honours. She assisted her close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood (1966).

Harper Lee died in 2016.