I finished Harper Lee's novel this evening. It's an excellent read. Nothing reached the heights of the first three pages. I think they are so very well crafted it would be impossible to sustain that level for the next 284. But it's a marvellously well-written novel. Scout is an authentic, wholly unique, entirely believable voice. Atticus Finch seemed real; not perfect but real. It's fascinating to play with the fact that Dill grew up to be Truman Capote (astonishing that the real life Scout and Dill would write three key books of 20th Century American Literature). The cast of secondary characters had a vibrancy and authenticity which drew me in to their world - so long ago, so far away it seems from my childhood. The black characters were less vividly drawn but one can't really fault the memory of a ten year old girl. It was her recollections upon which Harper Lee drew and TKAMB is a novel about white America not black. It's for others to tell that side of the story (and plenty have).
If I have a serious negative criticism it is with the melodramatic denouement. It worked, I suppose, although it's rather too neat and tidy; bringing the threads together in a neat little bow of moral virtue and just desserts for the bad guy. But I'm being churlish. It's a marvellous book.
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