To Kill a Mockingbird

I have no idea when I first read Harper Lee’s classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, but I would guess I was a teenager; the book was  published in 1960 and made into a film two years later but I didn’t see the film until a long time after that.

We are reading it again for our book club, and I approached the task a little apprehensively as so many favourite books from long ago have some how lost their appeal to me. I shouldn’t have worried; it is a wonderful book, and truly and deservedly a classic. I must have read it many, many times, because as I am reading it now the words are so familiar, almost as if I know them by heart.

However, there are differences, the world is very different from the last time I read it in many ways and the latest horrific events in the USA cast a very different shadow across its pages. The attitudes to race which are portrayed one would have hoped had changed in the fifty-five years since it was written, bust sadly in some ways things are as bad if not worse than ever.

I have been surprised by my own reactions to some of the less controversial parts of the book; in the scene where the horrible Mrs Dubose dies, and the truth behind her difficulties is revealed, I found that I was very moved, quite unaccountably moved. I am only about halfway through and I guess there will be a lot more surprises as I come to the more upsetting parts, surprises in my reaction I guess.

I am looking forward to the book club meeting, I’m sure everyone will have enjoyed the book, and been moved by the narrative, and have a lot to talk about in the light of the controversial aspects of it… but who knows, book club meetings always have an unexpected point of view offered by someone!