To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | What can I say . . .

To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | A classic in every sense

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To Kill a Mockingbird

	To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee Grand Central Publishing, 1988 - 281 pages average customer review:based on 1767 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

What can I say . . .

Best novel of the 20th century read by a great actress with a great voice for this story. To Kill a Mockingbird is, in my opinion, the quintessential and best novel for America in the 20th century. Sissy Spacek's reading of the story is wonderful in that her voice has just enough of a Southern twang and the little hoarseness that I associate, in my mind, with the main character -- Scout Finch (even though you could tell that she had a cold or allergies or something while reading this because there are a few parts where her voice is noticeably stuffy). I've read this story over and over for the last 30 years so I know it well but listening to Spaced read it aloud was a new way to enjoy my favorite booka nd film.

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A classic in every sense

This book is simple enough stylistically for a child to read and enjoy, yet rich enough to satisfy and reward adults. The characters draw you in and are developed well as the plot progresses. This is a story that will stay with you for years and make you reflect on stereotypes, judgmental attitudes and how we should treat each other as members of the human family. Highly recommended.

Worthy of all its acclaim

I believe the greatest elements in this book are its good, decent, praiseworthy characters. Harper Lee creates a time and place where each character is flawed and fallible, yet her work lifts the reader to a more noble and lovely view of our world. Atticus Finch is a believably moral man with lofty principles, yet we see his hesitations and stumblings as a father and public defender. Scout, Atticus' daughter, and Jem, his son, act out in youthful fits of rage and misunderstanding, yet the deep love and unbounded admiration they feel for their father is heartwarming.

The fact that Lee weaves threads of race and human rights and class distinction so skillfully into this tale is partly why I believe this book is such a beloved classic. Atticus is a single white father raising his two children with the help of a black housekeeper in Alabama during the 1930s. As Lee unfolds the family's story, we as readers are allowed to step back in time and possibly begin to understand what life may have been like from the perspective of young and old, black and white, and the poor and privileged. In the latter half of the book, Atticus is called upon to legally defend a black man for allegedly raping a white woman, and the trials he and his family suffer as a result make this book sing with conflict and weighty moral decisions.

Furthermore, I very much liked Lee's folksy and funny and frequently beautiful language and her skill in penning creative and insightful sentences of high literary value.

Recently I read or heard somewhere that Atticus Finch was determined from the results of a vast survey to be one of the most revered fictional characters in literature. In my opinion, Lee's Atticus deserves that distinction. I give this book my highest recommendation.

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mockingbird

i just finished reading "to kill a mockingbird" two days ago and it has still not left my mind, the characters harper lee creates wrap a blanket around your heart and show you a different side of life and loving and understanding one another, atticus finch is to me the ultimate figurehead of loving in the face of immeasurable injustice (and when read and compared to trials of modern day, the lessons taught from his character only seem greater and more profound) and the book as a whole struck me in such a way that it left me now as a changed and better person, i waited far too long to read this book.

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