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Mar 08, 2019baldand rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
(Warning: contains spoilers) This sequel to “To Kill a Mockingbird” was actually written first, and on p. 109 it gives a quite different version of the trial central to her masterpiece. Mayella Ewell, the white woman Tom Robinson was accused of raping, is an unnamed 14-year-old, and Atticus secures an acquittal. The funny story about the Cunninghams and the Conninghams in Maycomb (p.44-45) also appears in TKAMB. It probably would have been removed from the novel if Lee had been healthy enough to revise her manuscript. While TKAMB is told by Scout the child in the first person, the sequel is mostly told in the third person, but always dealing with Jean Louise’s experiences. Sometimes Lee lapses into first person narration, as if she had mixed feelings about her choice. It is a pity in a sense that she didn’t rewrite the book in the first person, like TKAMB. The NYT reviewer said the book revealed Atticus Finch as a white supremacist, the Guardian as a racist. It seems to me neither description is really fair to Atticus’s views as Lee depicts them. He is opposed, as is his daughter, to the Supreme Court decision on desegregation and is willing to make alliances with white racists to oppose the changes it is likely to bring. He has a much too conservative view of how fast the South can change to ensure racial equality. This is what puts off his daughter, Jean Louise, who wears her colour-blindness on her sleeve. Calpurnia, who was practically a mother to Scout in TKAMB, only has one meeting with Jean Louise, when she asks her “What are you all doing to us?” Oddly enough, this book set in the mid-1950s as Alabama desegregated, presents a bleaker view of race relations than its predecessor set in the 1930s. It’s a shame that the book never received the same loving attention of an editor that TKAMB did, but it is well worth reading just the same.