Book: To Kill a Mockingbird

[redbird]

I just read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time: I happened to see it sitting on a shelf at the library the other day.

The book lives up to its reputation: plot and characterization and prose style are all good. I got annoyed at Scout's older brother using "acting like a girl" as an insult, but it is entirely in character for anywhere in the U.S. in 1935 (and entirely plausible that I should be annoyed by how a random 11-year-old treats his younger sister). It wouldn't be that surprising, alas, even in 2006, though I can hope that in 2006 the sister might not immediately be persuaded not do whatever was labeled "acting like a girl."

I can't say, of course, whether a small Alabama town in 1935 really felt like Maycomb, but Lee's depiction is self-consistent and richly textured. So are Scout and Jem (her brother) and their father Atticus, their friend Dill, Calpurnia, and Boo Radley.

Lee's characters are dealing as best they can with difficult situations, difficult in ways both practical and ethical. I suspect that part of what gets this listed as "Young Adult" (that's the label on my library copy) and put into high school curriculum is largely Atticus talking about bravery and what it does and doesn't mean. (The back cover talks, of course, about "the crisis of conscience that rocked" the town, but part of Lee's point, I think, is how quickly so many people put things in the past.)

It's not going to be my favorite book, but I expect to reread it. (Besides, I like mockingbirds.)

Comments

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Heh. That /is/ one of my favorite books, mostly because I had it read to me by my mother, who quite evidently adored it. So when I re-read it on my own, I remember that enjoyment, and so on.

I think it's put on young adult reading lists because of the courage part, and the clear depiction of institutionalized racism (it's been banned in some places because it was seen as /supporting/ that institutionalization), and the wonderful, consistent characters.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I like Sean Stewart's Mockingbird too - not that the two have anything in common other than just being set in the South and being about coming to know yourself, but you did say you like them.

To Kill a Mockingbird was one of the things they made me read in school that I was glad of.

[crazysoph.livejournal.com]

I also got to read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school, and was very glad to have done so. My English teacher appreciated that she had a different "problem" in me than in the other students - I read loads, but it was all science fiction. (She didn't believe I'd read all those books at first, but discovered she'd popped the champagne cork when she asked me to give her synopses of "all those books", and I complied... with glee. It took great effort for her to get me to stop at "only" book three.)

After that, I think she did try to appreciate my favorite literature, but she definitely also applied herself to getting me to expand my own horizons (slight irony, given that expansion was into "mundane" literature, but I'm finally grateful).

Crazy(of course, some books were better for reading at age 35 than 15 - I'd put a lot of Dickens in that catagory)Soph

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

It's one of my favorite books, and I always like seeing someone discover it. The main reason it's labeled YA, of course, is that the protagonists are young adults.

And you do know that Truman Capote was the model for Dill, yes?

[peake.livejournal.com]

To Kill A Mockingbird is most certainly not classified as 'young adult' in the UK - or at least it wasn't when I read it many years ago, and you will only ever see it on the adult literature shelves in bookshops. Over here it is seen as a very serious book about racism and prejudice.

Of course, it is really nowhere near old enough to go through that mysterious process where a book for adults somehow transmogrifies into a book for kids - it probably needs another 10 or 20 years before that happens.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was surprised to see from this post that it's classified as YA in the States. I've also always assumed that the reason it figures on reading lists is for its portrayal of racism rather than anything else.

[beginning.livejournal.com]

That is one of my all-time favorites. As far as YA goes, it was added to a lot of high school reading lists for diversity purposes and hasn't really escaped that label since.

[redbird]

Those categories are weird. We read a lot of things in high school that I'd be surprised to see labeled YA, like Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, and the Odyssey.

But if it hadn't been so labeled, I probably wouldn't have read it: I wasn't specifically looking for YA books, but I walked past that shelf, and there it was.