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Go Set a Watchman

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Go Set a Watchman

By: Harper Lee
Narrated by: Reese Witherspoon
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About this listen

 Go Set a Watchman is set during the mid-1950s and features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father Atticus. She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand both her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood. An instant classic. Coming of Age Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction United States World Literature Classics

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Critic reviews

A new work, and a pleasure, revelation and genuine literary event…Go Set a Watchman shakes the settled view of both an author and her novel…This publication intensifies the regret that Harper Lee published so little. (Mark Lawson)
Go Set a Watchman is the more radical, ambitious and politicised of the two novels Lee has now published…It has contemporary relevance where Mockingbird is safely sealed off as a piece of American history…It does not undermine Mockingbird but it makes a reassessment of that story absolutely necessary…It is a book of enormous literary interest…Beguiling and distinctive, and reminiscent of Mockingbird…Go Set a Watchman can’t be dismissed as literary scraps from Lee’s’ imagination. It has too much integrity for that. (Arifa Akbar)
More edgy and thought provoking [than To Kill a Mockingbird] … It has a power to it beyond being a mere historical curio or more lit crit material for Harper Lee studies… Eccentric characters are brightly drawn. There is Lee’s trademark warmth, some droll lines and the sense of place and time is strong…[It has] a surprisingly provocative message — don’t airily dismiss the prejudices of others, try to understand them. (Robbie Millen)
The flashes of lyrical genius and ability to evoke the intensity of childhood play that come to fruition in To Kill a Mockingbird are in evidence…It’s nowhere near the novel Mockingbird is. It is much better than that…What Watchman tells us, and tells us rather powerfully, is that racism is not confined to people who are so clearly not like us…Watchman is for grown-ups. It asks serious questions about what racism is. And it comes at a time when American desperately needs a grown-up conversation about race. (Erica Wagner)
I’m happy to report that most of the caveats and conspiracy theories surrounding Go Set a Watchman melt away as you read the opening chapters and reacquaint yourself with that beguiling Harper Lee narrative style — warm, sardonic, amused by male folly and social pretension, wryly funny, a sassy Southern voice, Mark Twain with a dash of Katharine Hepburn. (John Walsh)
We have travelled into the past and returned to find that our present is not quite the same as we left it. Atticus Finch will never again be the white knight we once thought him. And yet the mockingbird still sings — no longer a song of innocence, but maybe one of experience; a song that combines sorrow, forgiveness — and, ultimately, a kind of hope. (Joanne Harris)
There are some flashes of genius…My favourite scene is at “a coffee”, where our rebellious Scout must make small talk with a bunch of married former acquaintances whom she deliberately hasn’t seen since school. Lee’s précis of their vapid conversation is hilarious, feminist and wickedly modern. (Katy Guest)
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I really loved Reese Witherspoon's narration - she brought Maycomb to life for me. It was lovely to be back under the spell of Harper Lee and it was fascinating to hear the story as a draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, seeing what changed and what stayed the same. I did get a little confused over the races politics that I think I may read over physically just to get them straight in my head, but otherwise, really great.

Wonderful narration - a brilliant first audiobook!

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I was very disappointed by this book. To Kill A Mockingbird is one of my favourite books and the hype surrounding Go Set A Watchman was tremendous.

I was actually quite bored by the story. Jean Louise recounts her life and how Atticus has changed ,which she is upset by.
There were some interesting Moral issues brought up, But no mention at all of The big trial from Scouts childhood, other than a mysterious nod to it and no mention at all of Boo Radley..

The book was written with humour, but it couldn't and didn't live up to TKAM

very dissapointed

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Given all the mixed reviews that surrounded this, I really did not know what to expect. I found the book to be a very natural segue and a wonderful development of the characters we all got to know and love in to kill a mockingbird. Harper Lee's moral of the story is as old as the world but one that a lot of people often forget. My only complaint is that Lee should have written more books but then again, I'm forgetting that she too is human and therefore not perfect!

Spectacular segue

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The Book It's Isn't Bad But It Has Too Much To Live Up To, The First One Is Much Better

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Thoroughly enjoyed this book , Rees Witherspoon was just fantastic as the narrator , highly recommend

Go set a watchman

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