Go Set a Watchman: A Novel

Staff Top Fives 2015

Our favorite books of the year.

An historic literary event: the publication of a newly discovered novel, the earliest known work from Harper Lee, the beloved, bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014.

Go Set a Watchman features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Returning home to Maycomb to visit her father, Jean Louise Finch — Scout — struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society, and the small Alabama town that shaped her.

Exploring how the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird are adjusting to the turbulent events transforming mid-1950s America, Go Set a Watchman casts a fascinating new light on Harper Lee's enduring classic. Moving, funny and compelling, it stands as a magnificent novel in its own right.

“Don't let Go Set a Watchman change the way you think about Atticus Finch…the hard truth is that a man such as Atticus, born barely a decade after Reconstruction to a family of Southern gentry, would have had a complicated and tortuous history with race.” Los Angeles Times

“[Go Set a Watchman] contains the familiar pleasures of Ms. Lee's writing — the easy, drawling rhythms, the flashes of insouciant humor, the love of anecdote.” Wall Street Journal

“A significant aspect of this novel is that it asks us to see Atticus now not merely as a hero, a god, but as a flesh-and-blood man with shortcomings and moral failing, enabling us to see ourselves for all our complexities and contradictions.” Washington Post

“The success of Go Set a Watchman...lies both in its depiction of Jean Louise reckoning with her fathers beliefs, and in the manner by which it integrates those beliefs into the Atticus we know.” Time

“Go Set a Watchman's greatest asset may be its role in sparking frank discussion about America's woeful track record when it comes to racial equality.” San Francisco Chronicle

“What makes Go Set a Watchman memorable is its sophisticated and even prescient view of the long march for racial justice. Remarkably, a novel written that long ago has a lot to say about our current struggles with race and inequality.” Chicago Tribune

“[Go Set a Watchman] captures some of the same small-town Southern humor and preoccupation with America's great struggle: race.” Columbus Dispatch

“Go Set a Watchman's gorgeous opening is better than we could have expected.” Vanity Fair

“Go Set a Watchman is more complex than Harper Lee's original classic. A satisfying novel…it is, in most respects, a new work, and a pleasure, revelation and genuine literary event.” The Guardian

“A coming-of-age novel in which Scout becomes her own woman…Go Set a Watchman's voice is beguiling and distinctive, and reminiscent of Mockingbird. (It) can't be dismissed as literary scraps from Lee's imagination. It has too much integrity for that.” The Independent

“Go Set a Watchman provides valuable insight into the generous, complex mind of one of America's most important authors.” USA Today

“A deftly written tale…there's something undeniably comforting and familiar about sinking into Lee's prose once again.” People

“As Faulkner said, the only good stories are the ones about the human heart in conflict with itself. And that's a pretty good summation of Go Set a Watchman.” Daily Beast

A wonderful new novel from one of America's bestselling authors. Exploring the tensions between a local culture and a changing national political agenda; family arguments and love: an instant classic.

From Harper Lee comes a landmark new novel set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch — "Scout" — returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town, and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past — a journey that can only be guided by one's own conscience.

Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humor, and effortless precision — a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context, and new meaning to an American classic.

Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. She attended Huntingdon College and studied law at the University of Alabama. She is the author of two novels, To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman. Harper Lee has been awarded numerous literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.