OK, everyone needs to stop what they're doing and go find a copy of Sissy Spacek reading this book. I am not exaggerating when I say it is the best audiobook performance I have ever heard.

I have read To Kill a Mockingbird perhaps 10 or 12 times in my life, and it is one of my favorite books, but this was the first time I listened to it. Sissy was the perfect narrator for Scout, and she also did a fantastic job at all of the other voices. If you like audiobooks, this is a must-listen. (And if any publishers are reading this, please hire Sissy to narrate more Southern literature. Her voice is so soothing she could charm a cat out of a tree.)

What struck me about the story this time is how sadly relevant the issue of racial prejudice and inequality still is, even though the book was first published in 1960. At the heart of the novel is the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man who is accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell. What quickly becomes apparent is that Tom is innocent, and Mayella was actually beaten by her father, Bob Ewell, when he caught her trying to kiss a negro.

Atticus Finch, the hero of the novel, does his best to defend Tom, but the jury (and most of the town) convicts him anyway, and Tom is condemned to death. Atticus' two children, Jem and Scout, are deeply upset by the case, especially when Bob Ewell continues to threaten them.

This book reminded me of the police shooting and riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and of innumerable other stories in the news of African-Americans not being treated fairly by officers or the courts. I would like to find hope in what Atticus said when he's trying to explain the Tom Robinson case to Scout: "Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win."

There is so much to love in this book. Scout, whose real name is Jean Louise, is a tomboy and she is our narrator. The story occurs over several years, and we watch her grow up. Harper Lee has a terrific sense of humor, and Scout's antics always make me laugh.

One of Scout's best friends is a boy named Dill (a character reportedly inspired by Harper Lee's real-life friendship with Truman Capote) and at the start of the book, the kids are obsessed with a reclusive neighbor named Boo Radley. Boo is a mystery throughout the story, and when he finally appears, well, I usually have to wipe a few tears from my eyes.

This novel is a gem, a true American classic. It has been a favorite of mine since I first read it in 8th-grade English, and I think it has had an impact on every generation who reads it. And based on the news, it sounds like it is still needed.

Favorite Quotes
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

“The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”

“As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it — whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, he is trash.”

“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”

این کتاب تو یک سال گذشته هر زمان که تو کتابفروشی بودم بهم چشمک میزد که بخرمش :)) و خب باید بگم فوق العاده بود، و مدت‌ها بود که به معنای واقعی اینقدر از خوندن یک داستان بلند لذت نبرده بودم! داستان شهر کوچیکی تو سال‌های دهه ۳۰ آمریکا که از زبان یک دختربچه روایت میشه و بی‌نهایت شیرینه. کشتن مرغ مینا درباره‌ی اجرای عدالته، تلاش برای خوب بودن و خوب زندگی کردن.. «اتیکوس فینچ» نمونه‌ی یه مرد درستکار و صادقه که شبیهش خیلی کم پیدا میشه، و اونقدر خوب و مهربون و دوست داشتنیه که شخصیتش به راحتی از ذهن بیرون نمیره و برای من یکی از موندگارترین‌ها شد.
بخش توصیف دادگاه پرداختش بی‌نهایت محشر بود، جوری که نمیشد لحظه‌ای کتاب رو زمین بذاری، همون قدر پر از استرس، سخت و تاثیرگذار..
همه چیز این داستان به اندازه و کافیه، جذاب و پر کششه و به حدی زیبا از عدالت، صداقت، خوبی، بدی و روابط انسان‌ها حرف میزنه که لذت خوندنش تا مدت‌ها همراهتونه..

After watching Friends Reunion, I felt like going back my high school times to revisit my reading list and picked up my one of the all time favorite reads!

I am rereading this book at different timelines of my life and I always find something different to like, getting attracted by different details, changing my mind about which character is my favorite. Nope actually last thing is a total lie. I love Jean Louise Scout Finch. Her narration, her growing up, her innocent and curious mind made her reserve a special place on my heart. She’s the daughter of charismatic, righteous Atticus Finch who is one of the remarkable characters in the literature history, a prominent lawyer defending black man who is accused of raping a white woman which results with townies’ growing hatred against the entire family.

It’s a bold, well developed story takes place in Monroeville, Alabama on 1936! A quiet fascinating lesson of civics, lesson of history and lesson of ethics.

My fifth time reading goes smoothly and reminding me of how much I loved the story of small town, a country, townies, neighbors, brave criticism of racism.

If you prefer audibook option, Sissy Spacek did a hell of a great job!

Here are my favorite quotes :
“Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open”

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

"People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for."

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

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2010 F.A.B. Bookclub pick # I.❤️. F.A.B.

I think this is the 3rd time I’ve read it. How do you even begin to rate a book like this? It’s a classic.

Note: this book is listed as one of the most popular books to be banned, over the past decade, from both schools and private libraries. Support freedom of expression by reading and buying banned books! ❤️

To know this book is to love it. There are many reasons why Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most beloved novels ever written. In setting forth the story of what happens when a lawyer in early-20th-century Alabama defends an African American man who has been unjustly accused of a horrible crime, Harper Lee writes with a grace and musicality characteristic of Southern literature. She delineates the Alabama society of an earlier time with an unerring eye and ear for detail. She tells a great and moving story of moral courage under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. And she composes a heartfelt paean for a beloved father.

When To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960, it was not such an easy thing for a white Southern author to write an openly and unapologetically anti-racist novel. In Lee’s home state of Alabama alone, Rosa Parks’s courageous act of civil disobedience, and the Montgomery bus boycott led by Martin Luther King Jr., were just a couple of years in the past; and still in Alabama’s near future were the jailing of Dr. King in Birmingham, the violence at Selma, and George Wallace’s “stand in the schoolhouse door” at Tuscaloosa to try to keep the University of Alabama segregated. It is against that backdrop of social tension that a young Alabama woman crafted her novel – one that won the Pulitzer Prize and became an instant classic.

The graceful, understated style of the novel no doubt contributed to its success. As the novel’s narrator, a grown woman named Jean Louise Finch, looks back to her childhood as the tomboyish “Scout” in her hometown of Maycomb, she recalls her beloved family – her widowed father Atticus Finch, a highly regarded lawyer, and her older brother Jem – and the language in which she offers those recollections at once makes the reader want to travel along.

Part of the beauty of To Kill a Mockingbird, even before the novel gets to its main business of chronicling the trial of Tom Robinson, is getting a sense of how family life might proceed in a small Southern town back in the 1930’s. For instance, Scout, Jem, and their friend Dill who visits them every summer have an ongoing fascination with the nearby Radley family, whose son Boo, a young man with an unspecified disability, has become a subject of interest for the children. There are all sorts of troubling, vaguely Gothic stories about Boo’s alleged behavior, and the children tend to linger about the Radley house, hoping for a glimpse of the mysterious Boo.

The children’s unauthorized visits to the Radley house eventually cause Atticus to intervene. Atticus, using courtroom tactics that will be important later in the novel, and keeping his mouth “suspiciously firm, as if he were trying to hold it in line”, gets Jem to admit that the three children were “putting [Boo Radley’s] life’s history on display for the edification of the neighborhood” (p. 50). Shortly afterwards, Jem “realized that he had been done in by the oldest lawyer’s trick on record. He waited a respectful distance from the front steps, watched Atticus leave the house and walk toward town. When Atticus was out of earshot Jem yelled after him: ‘I thought I wanted to be a lawyer but I ain’t so sure now!” (p. 50)

Many people first experience To Kill a Mockingbird through Alan J. Pakula’s brilliant 1962 film adaptation, with Gregory Peck’s Oscar-winning performance as Atticus Finch. It is a great film; and if you love it, as I do, I hope that you will return to it, and will continue to draw enjoyment from it. At the same time, I hope you will turn to the novel, as Lee has time in the novel to go into greater depth regarding the characters and themes that she wants to explore.

One of my favorite passages in the novel, for example, deals with Mrs. Dubose, a cantankerous old woman of the town whose continuing dedication to the prejudices of the Old South is symbolized by the Confederate Army pistol that she keeps under her shawls. In Chapter 11, Mrs. Dubose harshly criticizes Atticus for deciding to defend Tom Robinson, and Jem retaliates by tearing up Mrs. Dubose’s prize camellias. Jem’s punishment, his “sentence,” is to go and read to Mrs. Dubose, every day but Sundays, for a month.

In the context of Jem’s “sentence,” Atticus shares some of his ideas, in a way that will remind many of us of when our fathers told us something that expanded our ethical awareness. Atticus explains to Scout that he is defending Tom Robinson, despite the strong disapproval of most whites in his community, because “before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience” (p. 99). He dismisses Mrs. Dubose’s race-based insults by saying that “it’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you” (p. 102).

And when Mrs. Dubose has died, and new information has been revealed regarding her final illness, Atticus tells Jem that “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what” (p. 105). Those themes will be of major significance throughout To Kill a Mockingbird.

Indeed, as Atticus takes up the defense of Tom Robinson, an African-American man who has been falsely accused of rape by the daughter of a white farmer, we see a practical application of the ideas Atticus has expressed regarding the importance of doing the right thing, even if one knows that one cannot prevail. This element of To Kill a Mockingbird comes forth just before the beginning of the trial, when Scout hears a group of Maycomb whites speaking disparagingly of her father’s work as defense attorney for Tom Robinson. One man points out that Atticus was court-appointed as Tom Robinson’s defense attorney, and another replies, “Yeah, but Atticus aims to defend him. That’s what I don’t like about it.” The grown-up Scout as narrator recalls her childhood confusion at hearing these words:

This was news, news that put a different light on things: Atticus had to, whether he wanted to or not. I thought it odd that he hadn’t said anything to us about it – we could have used it many times in defending him and ourselves. He had to, that’s why he was doing it, equaled fewer fights and less fussing. But did that explain the town’s attitude? The court appointed Atticus to defend him. Atticus aimed to defend him. That’s what they didn’t like about it. It was confusing. (p. 151)

Once the trial has commenced, Atticus swiftly exposes the inconsistencies and lies in the testimony of Tom Robinson’s accuser, Mayella Ewell, and her father, Bob (“Robert E. Lee”) Ewell – ruining, in the process, whatever shreds of credibility these two people from an impoverished farm family may ever have had in Maycomb County. But the jury renders an unjust verdict nonetheless; and when Jem wants to know why, Atticus offers the following:

“So far, nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process. Those are twelve reasonable men in everyday life, Tom’s jury, but you saw something come between them and reason….There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads – they couldn’t be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins….The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.” (pp. 201-02)

But there is still a good deal of unfinished business left in To Kill a Mockingbird. Bob Ewell – exposed as an abusive liar, his credibility in his community thoroughly and permanently ruined in that courtroom – wants revenge against Atticus, and plans to seek that revenge by moving against Scout and Jem. The dramatic resolution of those plot events causes Scout to reflect, after a last-minute rescue by an unexpected benefactor, that “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them” (pp. 253-54).

To Kill a Mockingbird is so complete in terms of plot, characterization, setting, point of view, and theme that a single question often comes up: Why was this novel the only one? Harper Lee was 34 years old when To Kill a Mockingbird was published, and she lived another 55 years after that – and no other novel of hers appeared until Go Set a Watchman, an early draft of Mockingbird, was published in 2015, when Lee was 89 and in failing health. Why did the writer who once said that she wanted to be “the Jane Austen of South Alabama” not continue with her literary career?

Here is my theory. Go Set a Watchman sets forth a significantly less favorable picture of Atticus Finch. The character of Atticus in turn is clearly drawn from Lee’s beloved father Amasa C. Lee – who, like the novel’s Atticus, mounted an unsuccessful legal defense in a racially charged case in 1930’s Alabama. In the process of revising Go Set a Watchman into To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee found a way to recast the fictionalized portrait of her father in a more favorable light; but perhaps she found that there would be no way to move forward with her novelistic career without drawing realistic and damning portraits of real-life people who would read her work and resent the way they had been portrayed.

Thomas Wolfe, another great Southern writer of the 20th century, faced the same kind of resentment, and accepted that the way he had depicted fellow Asheville residents in novels like Look Homeward, Angel (1929) meant that he could not go home again to Western North Carolina. Perhaps Harper Lee decided that she could not, fictively speaking, go to the places where she would have to go if she were to write more novels.

Yet criticizing the author of a great novel because she “only” wrote one great novel seems ungracious in the extreme. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee set forth an unforgettably vivid portrait of American life in a small Southern town in the 1930’s. She created in Atticus Finch a singular example of a character of individual courage and conscience – a man who fights an unwinnable battle against a society’s corruption, simply because it is the right and human thing to do. This book is also a moving, lyrical love song for a beloved father – one that will cause many of us to recall with gratitude the strength, courage, and compassion of our own fathers. Harper Lee’s Mockingbird lives on, and no one can ever kill it.

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.”

This is a novel that I have read countless times over the years and it never fails to connect with me on some level with every reading. That is no small feat for a book to accomplish. To speak to people the world over, for over 50 years, means that there is something universal in this text.
We are all the mockingbirds of the title, and anyone who has reached the age of majority knows the feelings that the loss of innocence, and the harsh light of reality can create in a person. Harper Lee wrote a novel that captured the essence of that most universal of experiences, and I for one am moved by it every time.
I won't rehash plot points, but I will give you some reasons why you should read, and then reread, this text.
The first reason is for the beautiful depiction of imaginative childhood. The narrator, her brother Jem, and their friend Dill embody most of the traits of childhood, and their creative games, and thought processes are a joy to behold. The voice of Scout (the narrator) is a pitch perfect recreation of childhood and childish impulses. Part I (chapters 1-11) of this book are possibly the best recreation of childhood that I have come across in literature.
Another reason is a pretty simple one actually. The character of Atticus Finch is one of the noblest literary creations ever written. I want to be like him, and there are not many characters in literature I can, or would, say that about. The fact that being like Atticus is possible makes him even more endearing to me. He is someone who is noble in every sense of the word, and serves as an inspiration for so many reasons. He is a good father, a decent and empathetic man, and a person who tries to see the good in almost anything. The fact that there are so few Atticus Finches in real life makes him seem all the more desirable to me. It is obvious as you read this text that Ms. Lee loves this character. Atticus’ emphatic desire to see all people as humans and worthy of respect (even when those people are undesirable) is a lesson for our (and all) time. It is a trait that many people preach, but few actually practice. Let someone vote for someone you do not like, or have a leader you can’t stand, and then watch the ugly flow forth. Atticus resists those impulses at every turn in this novel, and I am inspired by that.
There are numerous other reasons why this is a stellar work of genius, not least of which is the wonderful plotting of the novel, the excellent and fleshed out supporting characters (these people are real to me) and the message that Lee finds numerous ways to reiterate throughout the book.
When you get to the beautiful and brilliant chapter 9, the thematic heart of the novel begins to unfold. And every time I visit Maycomb County I find myself tearing up a little at such beautifully human moments. The text’s final chapter never fails to move me emotionally because it is so understated and powerful.
Ms. Lee has created a pastoral version of the Depression era south, and even though there is vicious bigotry and hatred depicted in the novel, Ms. Lee (through her characters) does not give up on them, or us. The world, and we, can be better. We just need to remind ourselves to walk in other people's shoes once in a while.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗ 5

To Kill a Mockingbird has become such a potent cultural symbol in the Western world, especially in the United States, that you risk being seen as an insensitive cynic or a heartless bastard if you sound a dissenting note. From a moral standpoint it attacks institutionalised racism against the black people in the United States back in the day when it was common to treat them as subhumans. This is a noble goal, but judged on criteria of literary merit, I contend that there's not much in the book.

Flannery O'Connor called it a "children's novel." She did not intend it as a compliment. The novel suffers from a saccharine dose of sentiment, and it is fair to label it as a black-and-white cliché, literally. I found the characters two-dimensional, singly pursuing their idea without meaningful conflict that could have lent them some humanity. Atticus Finch, a morally upright man and gentle father, is the author's moralising mouthpiece who, supine and misty in the early stages of the story, is catapulted into action when he takes upon himself to defend the black man. If there's more to Atticus, I'm sure to have missed it completely. There is an oft-quoted famous line that goes like this:

n  You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.n

A bit of Captain Obvious wouldn't you say? It would have been illuminating if Ms Lee could make the reader climb inside the skin for a walk.

You can split the book into two separate novellas, neatly, like a cake; so big is the disconnect between the first half which reads like an interesting ghost story and the second half which is no more than a reportage on the proceedings of a criminal case in a court of law where a black man is facing (false) charges of rape. Through these court proceedings Ms Lee tries to paint a dismal picture of the times when hapless black people didn't stand a chance once a white man accused them of wrongdoing.

If one is to judge a work of fiction, one is to judge it for the style of its narrative method and what the writer has attempted to do in it; but there's a common fallacy, as I'd call it, of judging art's worth based entirely on the subjective moral urgency of its social content. This is not to say that I do not understand the need to incorporate minority voices that had been suppressed into mute existence for many centuries (But this story, unlike Toni Morrison's novels, is written from the white man's perspective). Quite a few famous post-colonial novels fall in this category: thin on literary craft but still appreciated for their social or political import. So I can understand why an average novel like this one spoke so strongly to the changing zeitgeist and struck a chord with millions of readers.

December 2014

Well, I never read this as a teen. The reason being that my middle school didn’t think it was appropriate to put in our reading curriculum, probably due to rape  and the fact that our district taught abstinence in lieu of any practical sex ed. So with the sequel about to come out, I decided to finally read this one. I wanted to go to Barnes and Noble and get their special leather-bound edition of it, but was told that it was no longer available. I bought it on Amazon instead.

What we have here is part coming of age school novel, part courtroom drama, and part small town mythos.

While Scout recounts her early years at school (which seem to blend together without regard for timing), it’s a learning process for all. Her earliest teacher makes bureaucratic, though well-meaning, mistakes by shaming Scout for already knowing how to read and doesn’t know the faux pas of the town social nuances.


What surprised me most about the court case was how swift it was decided. I don’t know how fast these things went in the old days (to see if the book was an accurate portrayal for the time), but a one-day trial for rape seems too quick. Really, even small claims civil cases can take days with all the pomp and circumstance of a courtroom (at least in larger cities). Atticus really makes this an open and shut case with a few facts, but that doesn’t seem to sway the juror’s predisposed prejudice against the defendant on the basis of color.



Then there’s this weirdness with a Halloween pageant where Scout has to dress like cured pork. Which leads up to a very real confrontation where she gets shanked in the ham.


Then Boo ghosts out of his place and just kills Scout’s assailant abruptly, says about 2 lines and leaves to star in The Godfather.


All in all, it was an okay novel. I can’t say I was blown away by it, but that might have been because my expectations were too high to begin with.

If you have to write just one book, this is the one to write. Scout and Jem Finch will always be two of my favorite characters in literature. And Atticus... don't even get me started. I just wish Harper Lee had written a hundred books.

I first read this book my freshman year of high school, at the age of 14 or 15. And now, here I am, at 22 and graduating from college reading it for the second time. It's incredible how much difference those 8 years of school have on one's perspective. Though I remembered a lot of the plot from this book, as it's quite memorable and I have seen the film a time or two, there were also a lot of elements, especially characterization, that I see in a totally different light.

To me, upon a second reading, this book is really about Jem. The book starts and ends talking about Jem. He undergoes so much change in this story, and while Scout is a great narrator and Atticus is an amazing father figure, Jem is the one that seems to be at the center of what Lee is getting at in this novel. Jem, to me, is the greatest character of them all.

On the other hand, Atticus Finch has always been a character that I've idealized and even slightly idolized. I remember him being so full of wisdom and such an amazing father, which he is. But upon re-reading this book, I have come to realize Atticus is very one-note. Yes, he is absolutely brilliant and kind, and if we had more people like him in the world it would be a better place. But in terms of a character, he is quite flat. I don't mean that negatively, but only to point out that his main function in the novel, for me, is to be a paragon of a wise person. He opposes racism tactfully and spiritedly. And he stands up for his beliefs. But other than that, his role as a character seems more as a function to serve Jem and Scout's growth as humans. It doesn't mean I love him any less; I just found it interesting to note how I see him differently now than I did when I was younger.

I also forgot how few pages the whole trial takes up of the book. For obvious reason, that is always what I think of when I hear To Kill a Mockingbird. But in reality, it's only maybe 10% of the story. So much of TKAM is about Scout and Jem's antics and life in Maycomb. I loved revisiting their lives and the lives of all their neighbors.

I can't give this less than 5 stars because of how amazing it is in so many ways: characters, writing, storyline, and themes. It's an important American story, and I am extremely curious to see how the sequel coming out this summer deals with the characters!

A blackbird used to sing outside my window. He put a smile on my face when I woke every morning, and he was there when I went to sleep. His song was the first thing I heard when I walked up my path after having been away from home for a while. He would sing all day and even some of the evening and night, proudly chorusing his own short refrains, the songs he had taught himself. He had three songs, all of just five notes each, and one of these was his especial favourite which he would repeat over and over again. Not for him were the complicated warbles and song structures of his fellow birds. Occasionally he would experiment; a twitter here, a different note there, but then he would confidently return to his favourites, and sing them loudly, his heart fit to burst. He gloried in his song, and I delighted in it.

Then last week nothing. There is a hole in my life now; something is missing - something of beauty has gone. I feel bereft, as if someone close to me has died. And sometimes, reading this book I would fleetingly experience a similar sense of loss.

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy... sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

Mockingbirds are a recurring theme in Harper Lee's only novel. To Kill a Mockingbird, first published in 1960, is justly a classic. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and is studied by almost every schoolchild in the USA. In the UK it has been on the National Curriculum on and off for a few decades.

The first half of the book deals entirely with a small town in the Southern United States, a fictitious small town of Maycomb, Alabama. It describes the events there, during three years of the Great Depression 1933-35. The events are described as if they are seen by a young girl, six-year-old Scout Finch. She talks of the special places she loves, the townspeople who live there and their daily lives. For an English reader it is very reminiscent of "Cider with Rosie," in that it conveys a particular place and time, which has now been lost. Also like "Cider with Rosie" the child's point of view evokes feelings of nostalgia, but without sentimentality.

Scout is caught up in her own world, involving her older brother, Jem, and her father, whom she calls by his name of "Atticus". The children befriend a boy named Dill, who stays nearby with his aunt each summer. They invent their own games, and fantasies, one of which involves a neighbour "Boo" Radley, the son of a reclusive family. This is fine fodder for the children, who are in turn terrified of, and fascinated by, Boo Radley, although few people have ever seen him. The narrator explains the history of the Radley family, and what has led to the present situation.

The first part of the book thus deals entirely with this childhood, and the reader learns through Scout's eyes, the habits and attitudes of the Maycomb residents, in preparation for what is to follow. Scout is beginning to develop both her attitudes and her moral compass. She has an aversion to all things girlish, and because this is a story reported in flashback, Harper Lee shows that Scout is to become a feminist, for the narrator Jean Louise ("Scout") still has an ambivalence about being a Southern lady. The child Scout also has burgeoning feelings of her sense of fair play, constantly challenging instances in her life, both great and small, which seem wrong to her.

One of the most humorous early parts of the novel is the description of the hapless teacher, unused to these Maycomb children, trying to instigate her modern city ways and educational methods. The indignation Scout feels at being disbelieved when she tells her teacher that she can already read, is very entertaining. Scout is told that she must undo the damage Atticus has done, and forbid Atticus from teaching her further. Scout's first day in school is of course a satirical treatment of education; Harper Lee is mocking it.

This part of the novel only refers obliquely to what will be the main theme of the second part. The reader learns that their father has been asked by Judge Taylor to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. The children become very involved with events, and these teach them about the endemic prejudice in this small town, enabling them to form ideas about those who maintain an unjust system, and those who are fighting against it, in varying degrees. The story is exceptionally moving, involving mob mentality, courage, murder, rape, class and gender issues and conflicts, courage and compassion.

Harper Lee has said that she thinks an author, "should write about what he knows and write truthfully". She has denied that this novel is an autobiography, and yet there are many parallels with people and events from her own childhood. For instance, Harper Lee's father was an attorney, similar to Atticus Finch, and in 1919, he defended two black men accused of murder. (It was his final criminal case; they were convicted, hanged and reportedly mutilated.) Her father was also the editor and publisher of the Monroeville newspaper. In To Kill a Mockingbird Scout's mother died when she was a baby, so is absent in the novel. Although Harper Lee was 25 when her mother, (whose maiden name was "Finch") died, she did have a nervous condition which made her mentally and emotionally absent. The author also had a brother who was four years older than her, just as Jem was four years older than Scout. And the family had a black housekeeper, who came daily, just as Calpurnia does in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Harper Lee once said, in a 1964 interview, that her aspiration was, "to be the Jane Austen of South Alabama." On a superficial level, anyone less like Jane Austen would be hard to imagine! Yet they both have the same underlying sentiment. They both challenged the social status quo and valued individual worth over social standing. For instance, in one episode Calpurnia chastises and punishes Scout, because she embarrasses her poorer white classmate, Walter Cunningham. Atticus respects and endorses Calpurnia's judgment, even later in the book standing up to his formidable sister, Alexandra, when she wants to fire Calpurnia. As Scout herself grows and develops through the book, she begins to view the women of the town, the "Missionary Ladies" with a satirical eye, thus alienating herself from their influence.

The character of Tom Robinson seems to have been inspired by several events, rather than one actual person. When Harper Lee was 10 years old, there was a story and local trial covered by her father's newspaper. A white woman near Monroeville had accused a black man of raping her. Another case at the time was of a black teenager, who was murdered for flirting with a white woman in Mississippi in 1955. Others have claimed that the book might have been partly inspired by a notorious case in which nine black men were convicted of raping two white women on negligible evidence. However, in 2005, Harper Lee denied any one influence, although she said that several of them served "the same purpose" - that of displaying Southern prejudices.

It is now thought that this novel, in particular the Tom Robinson character, acted as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. The jury at Tom Robinson's trial were poor white farmers, who convicted him despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence. In the background many more educated and moderate white townspeople hid behind the law and supported the jury's decision. Atticus Finch speaks here, as reported by Scout,

""Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up is something I don't pretend to understand...I just hope that Jem and Scout come to me for their answers instead of listening to the town"... I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every word he said."

This second part of the novel tells unpalatable truths. It reflects a whole spectrum of views, many nuances of prejudice. But it is very tough to read. Harper Lee had a piercing eye, and she did not flinch from telling the truth about people, ugly as it is. Significant social change was inevitable, but also was the fact that it would be conflict-ridden.

The parallels in To Kill a Mockingbird with Harper Lee's own life continue. Down the street from them lived a family whose house was always boarded up, and when the son got into some trouble the family's father kept him hidden at home for 24 years out of shame. This family seem uncannily like the Radleys.

But perhaps the most striking resemblance to her life is the character of Dill, whom Harper Lee based on her childhood friend, Truman Capote. As a child, Truman Capote lived next door to Harper Lee, with his aunts, while his mother visited New York City. The author has built Capote's imaginative talent for fantasising and story-telling into the character of Dill. Just as the two children were both boyish (the author was a tomboy) but also loved to read, so were Scout and Dill. Both felt alienated from their peers.

Because of these strong connections, and the reticence of Harper Lee to be interviewed about To Kill a Mockingbird a sort of mythology seems to have grown up around the author. It is claimed that she is reclusive, and there are even rumours that Truman Capote, with his greater acknowledged body of work, was the true author of this novel too. But in a 2011 interview, Harper Lee finally said why she never wrote again,

"Two reasons; one, I wouldn't go through the pressure and publicity I went through with "To Kill a Mockingbird" for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again."

Additionally a letter written by Truman Capote has been donated to Monroeville's Museum. (Monroeville was the town where she grew up, which is represented in the novel as Maycomb.) The letter dates from 1959, and in it Truman Capote wrote to a neighbour in Monroeville that Harper Lee was writing a book soon to be published.

Shortly after the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, in 1960, Capote and Lee both travelled to Kansas. They were to investigate the multiple murders which would provide the basis for the first ever "factual novel", a nonfiction novel by Truman Capote. (Here is a link to my review of "In cold blood".) The authors thought, lived and worked so closely together, that perhaps it is unsurprising that there are some stylistic similarities and approaches.

The narrative throughout is straight to the point and direct, despite the fact that it deals with such serious issues. It is the sort of book which, when read, is deceptively simple, yet has a way of metaphorically reaching into your chest and tugging at your heartstrings. The matter-of-fact descriptions work well, because they are conveyed from the point of view of a young girl, Scout, yet this is part of the novel's greatness. Because Scout with her child's eyes can see the simple truth, there is no posturing and no pretence.

The writing is very engaging, although to a modern reader the attitudes displayed by some characters are ignorant and insulting. It may be a shock to come across the word "nigger" used so casually in the novel. It soon becomes obvious that this is characteristic of the time, especially when used by the white folk. Scout is mildly reprimanded for using the word by her father Atticus Finch, as it was "common". To a modern reader of course it seems far worse, but this was a separatist society. Even in the UK, the description "nigger brown" was in common parlance - on clothes, in paintboxes and so on - for the first half of the 20th Century. "Coloured people" is also a description now avoided in the UK, having had patronising overtones since the late 1960's. Yet in other countries "people of colour" is a perfectly acceptable term. There are worldwide far fewer pejorative words for white folk, perhaps because they historically hold the power.

In the Southern States, slavery was a more recent phenomenon than elsewhere in the USA or the UK. And by using such racial epithets Harper Lee portrayed the reality of the time at which it was set, the mid-1930s. It is additionally complicated for the modern reader, since Harper Lee wrote the novel to be told retrospectively. This means that the story is told from the perspective of the 1950s, and actually reflects the conflicts, tensions, and fears of that later time. Nevertheless, it is still extremely unusual for a white person from the South to write such a book in the late 1950s. The accelerating racial tensions clearly bubble under the surface. We can see that this book, by its very existence and popularity, must have had a profound influence on the growing civil rights movement of the 1960's. It was an act of protest showing the possibility of people rising above their prejudices.

Yet even this is almost a travesty of the range of views displayed in the novel. Harper Lee's approach to class and race is far more complex than rich versus poor, or black versus white. She does not even take the predictable stereoptype ascribing racial prejudice primarily to "poor white trash", although she shows that issues of gender and class may intensify prejudice, and not allow the existing order to be challenged. The complexity of perceptions of racism and segregation is shown in the novel. We gradually become aware of a silent revolution among Americans. Not many are willing to stick their necks out and tell the truth, as Atticus Finch will, but there are those who will support him in secret; there is a growing feeling that racial inequality is both undesirable and unfair.

Oddly, there appears to be a kind of caste system in place within the Southern States, which explains almost every character's behaviour in the novel. Scout's Aunt Alexandra attributes Maycomb's inhabitants' faults and advantages to their genealogy. Some families apparently have gambling streaks and drinking streaks. Towards the start the reader learns a detailed background of both the Finch family history and the history of Maycomb. Mayella Ewell, being from the no-good Ewell clan, is to be pitied for this, because inevitably she is unable to admit the truth about making advances toward Tom Robinson. The traditions and taboos within this small part of the USA, seems almost to drive the plot, and the characters are powerless puppets. Scout thinks that "fine folks" are people with good sense who do the best they can with what they have.

The "fine folks" shine out of this novel, Atticus Finch being very much the hero. In fact it had originally been named "Atticus", but was apparently renamed, when the author realised her story was going beyond being a character portrait. It is also said that at one point she became so frustrated by the novel that she tossed the manuscript out of the window into the snow, but her agent made her retrieve it. Atticus comes across as such a fair-minded individual, with very independent thoughts from the rest of the community, even though he is seen through a very young girl's eyes. He is especially unusual as he treats his children's views with respect - giving them equal consideration as if they are adult. His direct statements, although said to his children, are simple truths for us all,

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

"before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

"I want you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what."

Frequently the character makes you gasp and stop in your tracks, just by the brevity and accurate simplicity of his words. At other times there is a wry irony which might make you smile,

"When a child asks you something, answer him for goodness' sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults." Or even,

"Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts."

Now that child-like view could almost be a maxim for life!

This review has not attempted to tell the story, or even add a new analysis of a much-loved and revered book. It is a personal reaction, by a non-American, whose reading of this book has been long overdue. So I was left wondering, what does the title mean? Who actually represents the mockingbird in this novel?

There are references to a mockingbird when Tom Robinson appears, and also Boo Radley. Harper Lee herself could also, at a stretch, be thought of as the mockingbird. But personally I think it is more abstract. For surely the mockingbird is innocence. Innocence will fade. In a way this is good, because it is replaced with knowledge. But then knowledge itself can be very dark. The skill of this novel is that all human nature is here, in microcosm. Individual events represent great truths, great rights and great wrongs. There are parts a reader will hate to read, and it could be argued that there should have been more from the black point of view. Yet Calpurnia is a wonderfully drawn character, and we get a sense of Reverend Sykes's strength and dignity too. The scenes in his church are beautifully described with flair and expertise; they are a joy to read. Those in the gallery of the courtroom have a different focus, and in a way seem to have lost the sense of the individual. But this is perhaps inevitable with a story told from a white child's point of view. It does not prevent To Kill a Mockingbird from being a great and perceptive book.

Children for the most part grow up. They do not feel the trauma so keenly, but use it to develop and grow. There are signs that one of these children may never become desensitised. Would that be such a bad thing? This is part of the book's honesty and rawness. Yet most of us hope that children will manage to grow, and to varying degrees make the world a better place, without losing their "song".

My blackbird has gone. Yes, the majestic chorus is there in the background as I wake. And I can hear an individual working out his song even now, with its little tunes and curlicues. But the simple notes of my innocent friend, sung out with such confidence, clarity and truth are no more. They are lost for ever. I know it was inevitable. But I hope he wasn't killed.