Go Set a Watchman
Harper Lee, 2015
Historical fiction Contemporary fictionLiterary fictionYoung adult
Jean Louise comes home to Alabama from New York and finds her small town, and her father, changed — or finds that she is.
Feels like unease, nostalgia and curiosity. About family, morality and society.
A page from the book
The day a parent stops being a god and becomes a person.
As you grew up, when you were grown, totally unknown to yourself, you confused your father with God. You never saw him as a man with a man’s heart, and a man’s failings—I’ll grant you it may have been hard to see, he makes so few mistakes, but he makes ’em like all of us. Harper Lee.Lee wrote this before To Kill a Mockingbird and set it aside; the manuscript surfaced in 2014 and was published almost exactly as it stood.
Books that feel like this
More by Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee, 1960
A girl watches her small Alabama town put a man on trial, and learns in one long summer how decent people can be cowards.
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Questions readers ask
- What is Go Set a Watchman like?
- Feels like unease, nostalgia and curiosity. About family, morality and society.
- What should I read after Go Set a Watchman?
- If you liked Go Set a Watchman, try My Sister's Keeper (Jodi Picoult), The Pearl (John Steinbeck) and Uglies (Scott Westerfeld).
A taste of the feed
A sudden crack in the veneer of politeness. A shock you didn't see coming.
My mother moves so fast I do not even see it coming. But she slaps my face hard enough to make my head snapbackward. She leaves a print that stains me long after it’s faded. Just so you know: shame is five-fingered.
My Sister's Keeper · Jodi Picoult
When your good fortune becomes the reason your neighbours hate you.
Every man suddenly became related to Kino’s pearl, and Kino’s pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone, and only one person stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became curiously every man’s enemy. The news stirred up something infinitely black and evil in the town; the black distillate was like the scorpion, or like hunger in the smell of food, or like loneliness when love is withheld. The poison sacs of the town began to manufacture venom, and the town swelled and puffed with the pressure of it.
The Pearl · John Steinbeck
Every civilisation leans on one thing. What happens when it is taken away?
Maybe they didn’t want you to realize that every civilization has its weakness. There’s always one thing we depend on. And if someone takes it away all that’s left is some story in a history class.
Uglies · Scott Westerfeld
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