The Best of Birds

Book recommendations are a bit of a mine field.  On the one hand, I love to hear about the great books other people have discovered and hear them talk enthusiastically about how stories have changed their lives. But I'm also very aware that reading is subjective and it's not possible to like absolutely everything, no matter how much you may want to.  So many people I know love Dickens or Austen, but I have to make polite excuses worthy of a Regency heroine whenever they're mentioned because I just don't get on with them at all.

One book that has come up many, many times over the years is 'To Kill a Mocking-Bird' by the late Harper Lee.  So many friends had recommended it, including local legend Len Copland, that I was really apprehensive about reading it.  I finally picked it up last month and boy I needn't have worried.

'To Kill a Mocking-Bird'
by Harper Lee
(Arrow Books, 1997)

'To Kill a Mocking-Bird' is a modern classic.  Set in the Deep South of the 1930s, it is a story of innocence, justice and prejudice told from the perspective of a young girl, Scout.  Scout, her older brother Jem and summer time friend Dill watch the grown up world with wide-eyed fascination, trying to make sense of the apparently irrational adults around them.  When Scout and Jem's lawyer father Atticus Finch volunteers to represent a black man accused of raping a white woman, they are inadvertently caught up in a series of events that will crystallise the contradictions of the adult world and bring unexpected dangers.

Having read it, I now completely understand why 'To Kill a Mocking-Bird' was such a staple of English Literature classes in UK schools.  Scout's voice and worldview are perfectly portrayed, meaning children can identify with it immediately, while adults soon slip back in time and begin remembering how it felt to be her age in a big, bewildering world.

'To Kill a Mocking-Bird' is a book which will keep me thinking for a very long time.  It is also on a very elite list of books which I definitely want to read again.  Ms Lee has written something succinct rather than short, crafting a plot that diligently leaves a breadcrumb trail for us to follow until the bitter end.  The more I think about this book, the more I want to know and the more I want to return to its pages and check what I missed first time round.

Ms Lee herself is one of the book's most interesting features.  'To Kill a Mocking-Bird' draws very obviously from her own experiences, including life in a small town in the southern United States and being the daughter of a lawyer.  Ms Lee passed away while I was planning this post and the question on many people's lips seemed to be 'When she could write like this, why didn't she write more?'.  I suspect a lot of people are hoping something will be found, in a vault, under the bed, in a box of trinkets.  Regardless, by writing just one book (and such a well-loved one at that), she's left readers with no where to go once they've finished it and it's draft ('Go Set a Watchman').  I for one will be looking out for a biography of this enigmatic writer.

Overall, this is a book that grows with the reader.  Those who read it as children can return to it as adults and read it anew.  It's engaging and thought provoking on a range of themes and topics.  It cannot and should not be reduced to the story of a court case.  There is so much more going on, much like there is so much more happening outside of Scout's field of understanding.

Thoroughly recommended.