Tag: To Kill a Mocking Bird

Review of “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

To those readers who follow my blog closely you’ll know that I am supposed to be reviewing “To Kill a Mocking Bird” by Harper Lee. All I can say is that I really did try but I only made made it a third of the way through. Please do forgive me, I am living through a plague after all. Every page was becoming a struggle and my mind just couldn’t take any more self conflagration. It was like I was slowly making my essence and vie for life fade away.

I was expecting it to be a fast paced court thriller about an alleged rape, featuring fantastical court argument. What I got was unending nonsense about a young girl’s childhood. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against young girls, I’m not a misogynistic pig but this was a particularly boring one. It is brilliantly written but so boring. It’s so boring that it seems quite fitting that school children are tortured into reading it. The film was so good but this novel is dross. To anyone that cares, it gets a zero. I’m sure some people will like, I just don’t know how.

So, I started reading “The Great Gatsby” instead and was I certainly happy that I did. It is set in the Roaring Twenties just outside of the Big Apple and was first published in 1925. It is told through the eyes of Nick Carraway who finds himself immersed in a great love story of sorts. He has moved to a new town and finds himself living beside a great mansion where raucous parties are a weekly event. After visiting a distant cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom Buchanan, he finds out from a fellow visitor Jordan, who he subsequently romances that it is owned by a Mr. Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire.

Subsequently he is invited to one of the parties, where he quickly realizes that nobody actually seems to know much about Gatsby. There are rumours about how he made his money but nothing certain. Little does he know that Gatsby has a secret reason for inviting him and that is to meet Daisy. They had been an item prior to The War and before he was rich.

What follows is a story of intrigue with the odd twist sprinkled in. It is now considered an American classic but didn’t do great when it was first published and the author died destitute. Let’s hope that is not the fate awaiting yours truly. During World War II, free copies were given to American soldiers and this was the beginning of a meteoric rise. I can see how the novel would make a lasting impression on young sold, stuck in a damp, squalid trench. Later, a few films were made telling the story.

My score is four stars out of five. I did feel that some of the characters were a bit too one dimensional at times. In particular Nick’s love interest Jordan. We learn little about her except that she is beautiful and plays golf.

Review of “Go Set a Watchman” by Harper Lee

This novel was released to much fanfare, although also to criticism a number of years ago. It is written by the same author as “To Kill a Mocking Bird”, the Pullitzer winning masterpiece and is set about two decades later. That is how I came across it. The criticism was due to the fact that it was released based on manuscripts after the author’s death. She didn’t intend for it to be released.

I have yet the read the more famous novel, and that may help give me a different perspective. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch—”Scout”—returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Atticus is the lawyer who saved a black man in a rape trial twenty years earlier. 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.

The disturbing truth is just how racist they all are, even her beloved father, Atticus. This comes as a shock to her and leads her to question everything, leading to physical sickness at times. By the end of the novel they are all still racists, but she has come to accept that she can be a little bit less racist and still get along with them. A strange ending where what all she really needed was a good smack from her uncle to straighten her out or at times it definitely felt that way. Although, the novel’s explanation is some psycho babble about Daddy issues.

If you get triggered by racism, this novel is not for you especially the last 60 pages. But it’s really not for anyone at all. The plot is threadbare and the first hundred pages quite boring. I struggled to keep going. The writer though has good descriptive powers, but the story just felt aimless at times.

Also, the fact Jean Louise only now sees the racism lacks credulity. Like, she did grow up there! This novel gets a very disappointing two stars out of five for me. Do yourself a favour and give this a wide berth.

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