The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy
Rachel Joyce, 2015
Random House
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812996678
Summary
From the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry comes an exquisite love story about Queenie Hennessy, the remarkable friend who inspired Harold’s cross-country journey.
A runaway international bestseller, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry followed its unassuming hero on an incredible journey as he traveled the length of England on foot—a journey spurred by a simple letter from his old friend Queenie Hennessy, writing from a hospice to say goodbye. Harold believed that as long as he kept walking, Queenie would live.
What he didn’t know was that his decision to walk had caused her both alarm and fear. How could she wait? What would she say? Forced to confront the past, Queenie realizes she must write again.
In this poignant parallel story to Harold’s saga, acclaimed author Rachel Joyce brings Queenie Hennessy’s voice into sharp focus. Setting pen to paper, Queenie makes a journey of her own, a journey that is even bigger than Harold’s; one word after another, she promises to confess long-buried truths—about her modest childhood, her studies at Oxford, the heartbreak that brought her to Kingsbridge and to loving Harold, her friendship with his son, the solace she has found in a garden by the sea.
And, finally, the devastating secret she has kept from Harold for all these years.
A wise, tender, layered novel that gathers tremendous emotional force, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy underscores the resilience of the human spirit, beautifully illuminating the small yet pivotal moments that can change a person’s life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1962
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Tinniswood Award
• Currently—Gloucestershire, England
Rachel Joyce is a British author. She has written plays for BBC Radio Four, and jointly won the 2007 Tinniswood Award for her To Be a Pilgrim.
Her debut novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, was on the longlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. In December 2012, she was awarded the "New Writer of the Year" award by the National Book Awards for the novel. Her second novel, Perfect, was published in 2013 to critical acclaim. The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, a companion novel to Harold Fry, was released in 2015.
She is married to actor Paul Venables, and lives in Gloucestershire with her husband and four children. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/18/2015.)
Book Reviews
In the end, this lovely book is full of joy. Much more than the story of a woman’s enduring love for an ordinary, flawed man, it’s an ode to messy, imperfect, glorious, unsung humanity.... [Queenie’s] love song is for us. Thank you, Rachel Joyce.
Washington Post
Joyce’s writing at moments has a simplicity that sings. She captures hope best of all.
Guardian (UK)
Joyce has a wonderfully evocative turn of phrase and like her other books this is a delightful read. . . . Queenie is an uplifting and moving companion to Harold.
Daily Express (UK)
Joyce nicely calls the book a companion rather than a sequel. But The Love Song is bolder than a retread of the same material from another angle. . . . After two such involving novels, readers are bound to wish for a third.
Telegraph (UK)
A wonderful read.... It is not necessary to read Harold’s story before reading Queenie’s to enjoy this bittersweet novel, which is a pleasure in its own right. However, reading both will only serve to double that pleasure.
Independent (UK)
[A] deeply affecting novel.... Culminating in a shattering revelation, [Queenie’s] tale is funny, sad, hopeful: She’s bound for death, but full of life.
People
Like Harold Fry, Queenie is delightful and dark.... But Joyce is so deft that when the book is over and you close the cover, the darkness fades. What sticks with you is the light of Queenie’s unwavering love.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Fans of Harold's story will appreciate a chance to meet him again and hear his story from a new angle, and after a slow and slightly confusing start, even newcomers to Queenie and Harold's doomed love story will not be immune to its charms. A bittersweet final twist is a fitting cap to a tragic, touching tale.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] beguiling follow-up.... In telling Queenie’s side of the story, Joyce accomplishes the rare feat of endowing her continuing narrative with as much pathos and warmth, wisdom and poignancy as her debut. Harold was beloved by millions; Queenie will be, too.
Booklist
[A] sometimes-funny, sometimes-sad reflection on life's bitter end. Any pathos is mostly subsumed by wry humor and clarity regarding life's foibles, the story ending with a beautiful twist reminding us we all journey through life as lonely, sometimes-inarticulate pilgrims. Reading Harold Fry first will allow this deeply emotional novel to resonate more fully.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Although Queenie is waiting for Harold Fry, she too is on a journey. Did you notice any parallels between the journeys in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy?
2. In her letter, Queenie notes that "we write ourselves certain parts and then keep playing them as if we have no choice." Do you agree with this statement?
3. "When I woke, I had a visitor. She had a grapefruit on her head. She’d also brought her horse." From the beginning of the novel, it is clear that Queenie is under the influence of morphine. With hindsight, how far do you think reality blurred with illusion?
4. Queenie describes her sea garden in exquisite detail. What is the relevance of the sea garden to the novel as a whole?
5. In her letter to Harold, Queenie describes how she witnessed David’s declining mental health. Do you put David’s troubles down to nature or nurture?
6. "Sometimes we like to laugh at ourselves. We like to be silly." How does Rachel Joyce use humour throughout The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy?
7. "I am starting again, I thought. Because that is what you do when you reach the last stop. You make a new beginning." How do beginnings and endings interact throughout this novel?
8. In her own letter, included at the end of The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, Rachel Joyce says that the patients at St Bernadine’s are a "chorus for Queenie—her backing vocals." However, Finty and her fellow patients are described in vivid detail. What backstories might you give them?
9. The doctor of philosophy argues that "when we love, it is only to fool ourselves that we are something." Queenie’s unrequited love for Harold is sustained for twenty years. What do you make of this? Is it true love or something else?
10. At which point in her life do you think Queenie is happiest?
11. Is the Harold of this novel the same man that walks out of his home in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry?
12. Queenie writes "I was to blame. I am to blame." Is her guilt justified?
13. Has the book changed your perception of hospices?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
I'll Be Seeing You
Suzanne Hayes, Loretta Nyhan, 2013
Harlequin Mira
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778314950
Summary
I hope this letter gets to you quickly. We are always waiting, aren't we? Perhaps the greatest gift this war has given us is the anticipation...
It's January 1943 when Rita Vincenzo receives her first letter from Glory Whitehall. Glory is an effervescent young mother, impulsive and free as a bird. Rita is a sensible professor's wife with a love of gardening and a generous, old soul. Glory comes from New England society; Rita lives in Iowa, trying to make ends meet. They have nothing in common except one powerful bond: the men they love are fighting in a war a world away from home.
Brought together by an unlikely twist of fate, Glory and Rita begin a remarkable correspondence. The friendship forged by their letters allows them to survive the loneliness and uncertainty of waiting on the home front, and gives them the courage to face the battles raging in their very own backyards. Connected across the country by the lifeline of the written word, each woman finds her life profoundly altered by the other's unwavering support.
A collaboration of two authors whose own beautiful story mirrors that on the page, I'll Be Seeing You is a deeply moving union of style and charm. Filled with unforgettable characters and grace, it is a timeless celebration of friendship and the strength and solidarity of women. (From the publisher.)
Author Bios
Suzanne Hayes also writes under the name Suzanne Palmieri. As the latter, she is the author of The Witch of Little Italy, The Witch of Belladonna Bay, and The Witch of Bourbon Street. As Suzanne Hayes, she has co-authored I’ll Be Seeing You and Empire Girls with Loretta Nyhan. Her novels have been translated into five different languages and have earned stars from Kirkus and Booklist. She lives in a haunted farm house by the ocean with her husband and three darling witches. (From the author's website.)
Loretta Nyhan was a reader before she was a writer, devouring everything she could get her hands on, including the backs of cereal boxes and the instructions booklet for building the Barbie dream house. Later, her obsession with reading evolved into an absolute need to write. After college, Loretta wrote for national trade magazines, taught writing to college freshmen, and eventually found the guts to try fiction.
I'll Be Seeing You, her novel cowritten with Suzanne Hayes, debuted from Harlequin Mira in 2013.
Loretta also writes paranormal thrillers for HarperTeen.
When she's not writing, Loretta is knitting, baking, and doing all kinds of things her high school self would have found hilarious. She lives in the Chicagoland area with her very patient husband and two wonderful sons. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The authors have composed letters that, if found in your grandmother's attic, would make you want to stay up all night reading.... Aside from the climactic sequence, the epistolary format never fully gels, as too many episodes call for a narrator's omniscience. Nevertheless, Nyhan and Hayes show us that letters from a cherished friend have a particular role to play in shepherding us through life's loves and losses
Publishers Weekly
Authentic touches bring the era alive...[and] provide a specific, everyday context for such timeless and universal passages and struggles as birth, death, grief, wartime temptations, divided loyalties, and hope.... [A] deeply satisfying tale. —Whitney Scott
Booklist
(Starred review.) [A] powerful, fascinating look at the war years and at the interesting choices and tragic consequences of a nation enduring an overseas war. Engaging, charming and moving, a beautifully rendered exploration of WWII on the homefront and the type of friendship that helps us survive all manner of battles.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Five Weeks to Jamaica: A Novel
Doug Oudin, 2015
iuniverse
353 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781491763025
Summary
When four friends discovered a "luxury" five-week cruise to Jamaica being offered for a mere five-hundred dollars, they considered the offer too good to pass up. On first sight of the vessel, their expectations diminished to the point where they questioned the logic of going through with the voyage.
Larry, always the optimist, persuaded Kurt, Madison, and Marcos to stick it out. Their adventure would turn into much more than they could have ever imagined, and ultimately changed their lives forever.
Joining a group of thirty eclectic souls aboard the 147 ft. Explorer, the friends departed Ensenada, Mexico, bound for Jamaica. From the beginning, it soon became obvious that the cruise would not be luxurious, and in fact, it was doubtful that it could even reach their intended destination. As they became acquainted with their shipmates, and began the journey down the coast of Mexico and Central America, through the Panama Canal, and on to Jamaica, friendships emerged, as did romances.
It soon became obvious to all that the five-week time-frame could not be realized, and several passengers departed at various ports along the way. Those who remained aboard began to discover a multitude of unique and interesting pastimes to immerse themselves in, inspiring laughter, tears, danger, and drama; and always, the sea buoyed their spirits, and carried them on its majestic presence.
When the ship did finally reach Jamaica, another odd twist to the journey developed. Kurt, Madison, and Larry agreed to set sail with a crusty Englishman on an old steel-hulled sailboat bound for Florida. Although the Englishman, Jeffrey Smythe knew the sea well, they had no idea what dangers and personal interactions lie ahead.
For those who love the ocean, know or wonder about tropical destinations, or merely enjoy the colorful interactions of a lively set of characters, Five Weeks to Jamaica is a story that will pique your curiosity, captivate your imagination, and entertain from its uncertain beginning, right through to its rather surprising end.
It's a great read for anyone with a yearning for wanderlust, a passion for adventure, or a glimpse into the very human relationships that bond men, women, and the ocean.
Author Bio
Charles Douglas (Doug) Oudin, author of Between Two Harbors, Reflections of a Catalina Island Harbormaster (a memoir) and Five Weeks to Jamaica (a novel), is a former harbormaster on Catalina Island. He wrote a column for the Catalina Islander Newspaper for twenty-one years, prior to beginning his career as an author.
Now living in Grants Pass, Oregon, he has been married to the love of his life, Maureen, for thirty-seven years. They have two sons, Trevor and Troy.
Doug Oudin lived and worked on an island, and spent much time on the Pacific Coast and parts of the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean, his love of the sea serves him well for creating colorful seafaring adventures.
His first book, Between Two Harbors, Reflections of a Catalina Island Harbormaster, chronicles his thirty-two years living and working on Catalina Island, and includes his involvement and perceptions concerning the tragic death of actress Natalie Wood. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Doug on Facebook.
Book Reviews
Five Weeks to Jamaica by Doug Oudin is a book in the fiction section. It traces the journey of the passengers from the coast of Mexico to Jamaica, aboard the cruise ship, Explorer.
Five weeks of non-stop fun and adventuring at the sea? Definitely yes! ... The book is written in third person, covering the individual stories of the passengers which are effortlessly intertwined with the central theme of their tumultuous but exciting journey across the ocean. The author has penned down a story with rich and colorful descriptions, which leave a strong visual imprint on the reader’s mind....
The characters display the complex human emotions fairly well. The emotional turmoil faced by some of the characters and their ensuing troubled romances, are captured nicely by the author. There is an air of believability about the characters, especially how they slowly come to trust each other and overcome their inhibitions. The struggles of the group and their determination to enjoy the trip, despite the troubles, dangers and a few mishaps, have been portrayed very well by the author.
This book will appeal to all the readers who love the sea. It will also appeal to those readers who love travelling, if not the ocean (like me). I rate the book 4 out of 4 stars, for its believable characters and wondrous scenes.
Online Bookclub, a professional review
I found Five weeks to Jamaica to be a great read! I was hooked just from reading the Preface. I have been a licensed Yacht Delivery Captain for almost thirty years and have been to many of the locations described in the book (very accurately by Doug Oudin). The whole premise of a group of people from many different walks of life, willing to take that leap of faith on a far from pristine yacht, with a questionable crew and ship on a dangerous and uncertain journey staggers the imagination! This cruise would be filled with possible problems and mishaps with the best of ships and crews and to venture out of the harbor on that ship was obviously going to be the start of a wild and uncertain ride. All aspects of this voyage was masterfully written by Doug Oudin. He brought all the characters to life and put you in the middle of this wild ride. I read the book in two days and cannot wait for his next one! (Five stars.)
Robert Murcott
Loved the story so much. It gave me an awesome look into the lives of those who love the sea, and spend their life on it. I thought the ending was poignant, and thought provoking. Thank you for sharing this adventure! (Five stars.)
Monica Murphy, Amazon Customer
A fascinating read with a new adventure on almost every page; author Doug Oudin describes, in intimate detail, the lives of his characters, fishing, surfing, the beauty and mishaps while aboard a yacht and sailboat, as well as capturing the beauty of the lands and cultures from Mexico, through Central America, and on to the Caribbean. (Four stars.)
Doranne Long, Goodreads
Discussion Questions
1. How do you like the character development, particularly the four main characters, but also the supporting characters like Captain Ellis, Tiona, Guillermo, Sanford, and Jeffrey Smythe?
2. Do the scene and setting descriptions enhance the storyline? Are the ports and harbors visited along the way described in a manner that helps you visualize the tropical beauty and cultural depictions?
3. Is Tiona's flirtatious personality and promiscuity merely a quest for her to get attention, or might she have deeper rooted personal issues?
4. When Jeffrey Smythe joins the cruise, does his arrival immediately arouse Kurt's ire, or is it Smythe's infatuation with Madison that creates tension and distrust from Kurt?
5. What is the cause of Captain Ellis' gradual transformation? Is his personality change due to some form of substance abuse, or is it merely the pressure from having to constantly try to hold things together aboard a ship that is obviously falling to pieces?
6. How well do the plot twists and turns enhance the story? Does the ending fit well with the storyline?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Five Selves
Emanuela Barasch-Rubinstein, 2015
Holland House Books
190 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781909374799
Summary
Five Selves is a collection of five stories.
♦ "A Bird Flight," is about a woman traveling from Israel to Chicago after the death of her father. It is the story of my own dealing with the death of my beloved father.
♦ "Earrings" is about a relationship between a grandmother and granddaughter in Israel—three generations of Israeli women, three stages of Israeli society.
♦ "The Grammar Teacher" is a reflection on the changing values of our world; an excellent, hardworking teacher is fired because she is not assertive or "modern" enough.
♦ "Watchdog" is a story about dealing with phobia. A young man manages to overcome his fear of dogs.
♦ "Aura," an experimental work, depicts a man waking up after a severe accident, unable to recognize his family. It is an attempt to adopt a primordial perspective. (From the author.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Jerusalem, Israel
• Education— B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Hebrew University, Jerusalem
• Currently—lives in Tel Aviv, Israel
Emanuela Barasch-Rubinstein is an author, scholar in the Humanities, and a blogger. She focuses on cultural symbols and themes, and studies their effect on human behavior.
Emanuela was born in Jerusalem. Her parents fled their homes in Eastern Europe at the outbreak of World War II, wandered for years during the war, until they finally came to Israel. Her father was an art historian, Moshe Barasch. He encouraged Emauela's humanistic education and enthusiastically nurtured any intellectual curiosity.
The choice of studying in the faculty of the Humanities at the Hebrew University was a natural one. Her B.A. is in Comparative Literature and Philosophy. Her M.A. and Ph.D. are in the field of Comparative Religion. She was part of the Comparative Religions graduate program at Tel Aviv University, and now she is part of the Nevzlin Center for Jewish Peoplehood Studies at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzlya, a private academic center.
Emanuela engages in literary writing. A collection of five novellas, Five Selves, was published by Holland House Books in the UK. She wrote the stories in Hebrew and translate them herself into English.
Emanuela runs a successful blog: On Ourselves and Others on literature, art history, history, and other cultural topics, with a pronounced Israeli perspective.
Emanuela has published scholarly books on the cultural perception of Nazism: The Devil, the Saints, and the Church (Peter Lang, 2004), Nazi Devil (Magnes Press, 2010), and Mephisto in the Third Reich (De Gruyter Press, 2014).
Book Reviews
(Starred review) While preoccupied with different issues—grief and privacy, inflexibility and a changing work culture, generational rift, and a phobia—characters are interconnected in the literature through their common search for personal insight.... Barasch-Rubinstein's lean, beautiful writing prevents the characters from overstating emotion and avoids any melodrama.... This anthology is a highly visual, spiritual gem.
Publishers Weekly
A man in a hospital percreives the world through semi-consciousness; another seeks to overcome his fear of dogs; a teacher confronts her limitations; a woman coming to terms with the death of her father travels to a symposium.... [C]aptured at a moment of crisis, are written with an affecting, powerful intelligence, and shot through with an emotional intensity. A memorable and singular voice."
Mail on Sunday: Best New Fiction (UK)
Some writers dwell on flesh and furnishings, others, like Emanuela Barasch-Rubinstein, look deep into interior lives. Her Five Selves is a mindscape masterpiece—a handful of novellas in which the dramatis personae struggle to understand themselves in dark times. An Israeli-born scholar of culture, religion and philosophy, Barasch-Rubinstein seems to perceive the soul through x-ray eyes—or perhaps, as the daughter of a renowned art historian, she was raised to look way beyond canvas and brush-strokes.
Madeleine Kinksley - Jewish Chronicle
Discussion Questions
1. "A Bird's Flight"—what are the stages of mourning for a loved one?
2. "Earrings"—Could a grandaughter be closer to her gradmother more than her mother, not only presonally but also culturally?
3. "The Grammar Teacher"—in the contemporary, modern world, is appearance more important than substance?
4. "Watch Dog"—when struggeling with phobia, what is it that we need to overcome?
5. "Aura"—When we talk about "memory loss," is the fundamental human framework of thought and experience still there?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Go Set a Watchman
Harper Lee, 2015
HarperColllins
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062409867
Summary
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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 28, 1926
• Where—Monroeville, Alabama, USA
• Education—B.A. (later studied law), University of Alabama
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize, 1961; Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2007
• Currently—Monroeville, Alabama
Harper Lee, known to friends and family as Nelle, was born in the small southwestern Alabama town of Monroeville, Alabama, on April 28, 1926, the youngest of four children. Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer who also served on the state legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote.
While pursuing a law degree at the University of Alabama, she wrote for several student publications and spent a year as editor of the campus humor magazine, Ramma-Jamma. Though she did not complete the law degree, she pursued studies for a summer in Oxford, England, before moving to New York in 1950, where she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC in New York City. Lee continued working as a reservation clerk until the late 50s, when she resolved to devote herself to writing.
She lived a frugal lifestyle, traveling between her cold-water-only apartment in New York to her family home in Alabama to care for her ailing father. Having written several long stories, Harper Lee located an agent in November 1956. The following month at the East 50th townhouse of her friends writer Michael Brown and Joy Williams Brown, she received a gift of a year's wages with a note: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas." Within a year, she had a first draft. Working closely with J. B. Lippincott & Co. editor Tay Hohoff, she completed To Kill a Mockingbird in the summer of 1959.
Published July 11, 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate bestseller and won her great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. It remains a bestseller today, with over 30 million copies in print. In 1999, it was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a poll conducted by the Library Journal.
After completing To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee accompanied Capote to Holcomb, Kansas, to assist him in researching what they thought would be an article on a small town's response to the murder of a farmer and his family. Capote expanded the material into his best-selling book, In Cold Blood (1966). The experiences of Capote and Lee in Holcomb were depicted in two different films, Capote (2005) and Infamous (2006).
Lee said of the 1962 Academy Award–winning screenplay adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird by Horton Foote: "If the integrity of a film adaptation can be measured by the degree to which the novelist's intent is preserved, Mr. Foote's sceen-play should be studied as a classic." She also became a close friend of Gregory Peck, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch, the father of the novel's narrator, Scout. She remains close to the actor's family. Peck's grandson, Harper Peck Voll, is named after her.
Later honors and recognition
In June 1966, Lee was one of two persons named by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the National Council on the Arts. On May 21, 2006, she accepted an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame. To honor her, the graduating seniors were given copies of Mockingbird before the ceremony and held them up when she received her degree. In a letter published in Oprah Winfrey's magazine O (May 2006), Lee wrote about her early love of books as a child and her steadfast dedication to the written word: "Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books." In 2007 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush.
Go Set a Watchman
According to Lee's lawyer Tonja Carter, following an initial meeting to appraise Lee's assets in 2011, she re-examined Lee's safe-deposit box in 2014 and found the manuscript for Go Set a Watchman. After contacting Lee and reading the manuscript, she passed it on to Lee’s agent Andrew Nurnberg.
On February 3, 2015, it was announced that HarperCollins would publish Go Set a Watchman, which includes versions of many of the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird. According to a HarperCollins press release, it was originally thought that the Watchman manuscript was lost. According to Nurnberg, Mockingbird was originally intended to be the first book of a trilogy: "They discussed publishing Mockingbird first, Watchman last, and a shorter connecting novel between the two."
Jonathan Mahlers account of how Watchman was only ever really considered to be the first draft of Mockingbird, however, makes this assertion seem unlikely at best. Evidence where the same passages exist in both books, in many cases word for word, also further refutes this assertion.
The book was published to controversy in July, 2015, as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, though it has been confirmed to be only the first draft of the latter, with many narrative incongruities, repackaged and released as a completely separate work.
The book is set some 20 years after the time period depicted in Mockingbird, when Scout returns as an adult from New York to visit her father in Maycomb, Alabama. It alludes to Scout's view of her father, Atticus Finch, as the moral compass ("watchman") of Maycomb, and, according to the publisher, how she finds upon her return to Maycomb, that she...
is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father's attitude toward society and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood.
The publication of the novel (announced by her lawyer) raised concerns over why Lee, who for 55 years had maintained that she would never write another book, would suddenly choose to publish again.
In February 2015, the State of Alabama, through its Human Resources Department, launched an investigation into whether Lee was competent enough to consent to the publishing of Go Set a Watchman. The investigation found that the claims of coercion and elder abuse were unfounded, and, according to Lee's laywer, Lee is "happy as hell" with the publication.
This characterisation, however, has been contested by many friends of Lee. Marja Mills, author of, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee, a friend and former neighbor of Lee and her older sister Alice, paints a very different picture. In her piece for The Washington Post, "The Harper Lee I Knew," she quotes Lee's sister Alice, whom she describes as "gatekeeper, advisor, protector" for most of Lee's adult life, as saying...
Poor Nelle Harper can't see and can't hear and will sign anything put before her by anyone in whom she has confidence.
She makes note that Watchman was announced just two and a half months after Alice's death and that all correspondence to and from Lee goes through her new attorney. She describes Lee as...
in a wheelchair in an assisted living center, nearly deaf and blind, with a uniformed guard posted at the door [and visitors] restricted to those on an approved list.
New York Times columnist Joe Nocera supports this argument. He also takes issue with how the book has been promoted by the "Murdoch Empire" as a "newly discovered" novel, attesting that the other people in the Sothebys meeting insist that Lee's attorney Carter was present when the manuscript was first found—in 2011, not 2014—by Lee's former agent (who was subsequently fired) and the Sotheby's specialist. They claim Carter knew full well that it was the same one submitted to Tay Hohoff in the 1950's and reworked into Mockingbird—and that Carter has been sitting on the discovery, waiting for the moment when she, not Harper's sister Alice, would be in charge of Harper Lee's affairs.
Stephen Peck, son of actor Gregory Peck has also expressed concern. Responding to the question of how he thinks his father would have reacted to the book, he says that his father "would have appreciated the discussion the book has prompted, but would have been troubled by the decision to publish it."
Peck notes that his father considered Lee a dear friend. She gave him the pocket watch that had belonged to her father, on whom she modeled Atticus and that Gregory wore it the night he won an Oscar for the role. Stephen, who is president and chief executive of the United States Veterans Initiative, goes on to say, “I think he would have felt very protective of her,” and he believed his father would have counseled Lee not to publish Watchman because it could taint Mockingbird, one of the most beloved novels [in] American history.
Later in the same article, which was posted in The Wall Street Journal, Stephen Peck says,
To me, it was an unedited draft. Do you want to put that early version out there or do you want to put it in the University of Alabama archives for scholars to look at?
(Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/16/2015.)
Book Reviews
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
Watchman is compelling in its timeliness.
Washington Post
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 father’s 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
Go Set a Watchman comes to us at exactly the right moment. All important works of art do. They come when we don’t know how much we need them.
Chicago Tribune
[T]he voice we came to know so well in To Kill a Mockingbird—funny, ornery, rulebreaking—is right here in Go Set a Watchman, too, as exasperating and captivating as ever.
Chicago Tribune
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.
Guardian (UK)
Lee’s ability with description is evident… with long sentences beautifully rendered and evoking a world long lost to history, but welcoming all the same.
CNN.com
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.
Independent (UK)
Go Set a Watchman provides valuable insight into the generous, complex mind of one of America’s most important authors.
USA Today
Atticus’ complexity makes Go Set a Watchman worth reading. With Mockingbird, Harper Lee made us question what we know and who we think we are. Go Set a Watchman continues in this noble literary tradition.
New York Post
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
Go Set a Watchman offers a rich and complex story… To make the novel about pinning the right label on Atticus is to miss the point.
Bloomberg View
Harper Lee’s second novel sheds more light on our world than its predecessor did.
Time
[Go Set a Watchman is a] brilliant book that ruthlessly examines race relations.
Denver Post
Go Set a Watchman is such an important book, perhaps the most important novel on race to come out of the white South in decades…
New York Times Opinion Pages: Taking Note
In this powerful newly published story about the Finch family, Lee presents a wider window into the white Southern heart, and tells us it is finally time for us all to shatter the false gods of the past and be free.
NPR's "Code Switch"
[Go Set a Watchman is] filled with the evocative language, realistic dialogue and sense of place that partially explains what made Mockingbird so beloved.
Buffalo News
The editor who rejected Lee's first effort had the right idea. [Watchman] is clearly the work of a novice, with poor characterization (how did the beloved Scout grow up to be such a preachy bore, even as she serves as the book's moral compass?), lengthy exposition, and ultimately not much story, unless you consider Scout thinking she's pregnant because she was French-kissed...compelling.... The temptation to publish another Lee novel was undoubtedly great, but it's a little like finding out there's no Santa Claus.
Publishers Weekly
Scout...[is] returning home from New York to Maycomb Junction, AL, post-Brown v. Board of Education and encountering strongly resistant states'-rights, anti-integrationist forces that include boyfriend Henry and, significantly, her father, Atticus Finch.... Readers shocked by that revelation must remember that...the work in hand is not a sequel but served as source material for Lee's eventual Pulitzer Prize winner, with such reworked characters a natural part of the writing and editing processes. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
[Go Set a Watchman] too often reads like a first draft, but Lee's story nonetheless has weight and gravity.... As Scout wanders from porch to porch and parlor to parlor on both the black and white sides of the tracks, she hears stories that complicate her—and our—understanding of her father. To modern eyes, Atticus harbors racist sentiments.... Lee...writes of class, religion, and race, but most affectingly of the clash of generations and traditions.... It's not To Kill a Mockingbird, yes, but it's very much worth reading.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Go Set a Watchman takes place more than twenty years after To Kill a Mockingbird begins. When Wa t c h m a n opens, Jean Louise Finch—now twenty-six and living in the North, in New York City—is returning to her hometown of Maycomb, Alabama. Describe the Maycomb of Go Set a Watchman. If you have read Mockingbird, has the town changed in the intervening years? If so, how?
2. Harper Lee writes, “Until comparatively recently in its history, Maycomb County was so cut off from the rest of the nation that some of its citizens, unaware of the South’s political predilections over the past ninety years, still voted Republican.” What are these predilections, and where do they originate? What is Harper Lee telling us about the period and the politics and attitudes of this small Southern town?
3. Maycomb is a town without train service, and its bus service “was erratic and seemed to go nowhere.” How does this lack of connection isolate the citizens of Maycomb, and how does that isolation affect how they see themselves and outsiders? Early in the novel, her longtime friend Henry Clinton tells her “you’re gonna see Maycomb change its face completely in our lifetime.” What does he foresee that Jean Louise cannot—or perhaps does not want to see?
4.Think about the extended Finch family. What is their status in Maycomb? What is the significance of being a Finch in this small Southern town? Does it afford them privileges—as well as expectations of them and responsibilities—that other families do not share? Do the Finches have freedoms that others do not enjoy?
5. Describe the Jean Louise Finch of Watchman. How does this grown-up woman compare to her younger self ? How does Jean Louise conform—or not—to the ideal of womanhood in the 1950s? What was that ideal? Compare her to her Aunt Alexandra and the women of Maycomb. Does she fit in with these women? What did you learn about them at the Coffee social that Aunt Alexandra hosts in Jean Louise’s honor? In both Mockingbird and Watchman, Alexandra tells Jean Louise that she is part of a genteel family and that she must at like a “lady.” How did ladies “act” in the first half of the twentieth century and is there such a thing as a “lady” today?
6. Has living away from Maycomb—and in a place like New York—had an impact on Jean Louise? What does she think about New York and life there? What does the big city offer her that Maycomb does not—and vice versa? Now that Atticus is older and suffering from arthritis, why doesn’t Jean Louise move back to Maycomb permanently? “Maycomb expected every daughter to do her duty. The duty of his only daughter to her widowed father after the death of his only son was clear: Jean Louise would return and make her home with Atticus; that was what a daughter did, and she who did not was no daughter.” What responsibilities do children—especially female children—owe their parents?
7. Describe the relationship between Jean Louise and Atticus at the beginning of the novel. Does Jean Louise idealize her father too much? How does she react when she discovers that her father is a flawed human being? How does this discovery alter her sense of herself, her family, and her world? By the novel’s end, how do father and daughter accommodate each other?
8. Talk about the Atticus portrayed in Go Set a Watchman. If you read Watchman first, how might the novel color your ideas about the Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird? What was your reaction to some of the opinions he voices in Watchman? Do they make him a more realistic—if less heroic—character than that portrayed in Mockingbird? Is Atticus racist? Would he consider himself to be racist?
9. “Integrity, humor, and patience were the three words for Atticus Finch.” After your reading of Watchman, do these three words still hold true? What words would you use to describe him?
10. What are Jean Louise’s feelings toward Henry Clinton? Would he make a good husband for her? Both her aunt and her uncle tell her that Henry isn’t “suitable,” that he “is not her kind.” What do they mean, and what does it mean to Jean Louise? Is it strictly because of Henry’s background or is there something more? What adjectives would you use to describe Henry’s character?
11. Is Henry like Atticus, his mentor and friend? Is Jean Louise’s assessment of Henry later in the novel correct? Are Henry and Atticus good men? Can you be a moral person and hold views that may be unacceptable to most people? How do Atticus’s actions toward the blacks of Maycomb compare with his views about them?
12. Why does Maycomb have a citizens’ council, and why does this upset Jean Louise when she discovers that nearly everyone in town belongs to it? By allowing the likes of a racist segregationist like Grady O’Hanlon to speak at the meeting, are Atticus and Henry defending O’Hanlon’s First Amendment right to free speech—or are they condoning his message?
13. Harper Lee writes, “Had she been able to think, Jean Louise might have prevented events to come by considering the day’s occurrences in terms of a recurring story as old as time: the chapter which concerned her began two hundred years ago and was played out in a proud society the bloodiest war and harshest peace in modern history could not destroy, returning, to be played out again on private ground in the twilight of a civilization no wars and no peace could save.” Why would this realization have helped Jean Louise? Are we still fighting the Civil War today?
14. Harper Lee offers a window into Jean Louise’s turmoil after she attends the citizens’ council meeting. “Had she insight, could she have pierced the barriers of her highly selective, insular world, she may have discovered that all her life she had been with a visual defect which had gone unnoticed and neglected by herself and by those closest to her: she was born color blind.” Why is Jean Louise’s color blindness a “visual defect”? How does being color blind shape who she is and how she sees the world?
15. Trying to reconcile the knowledge Jean Louise has learned with her views of those she loves forces her to confront painful questions. “What was this blight that had come down over the people she loved? Did she see it in stark relief because she had been away from it? Had it percolated gradually through the years until now? Had it always been under her nose for her to see if she had only looked? No, not the last.” What makes her say no to this question? And finally, “What turned ordinary men into screaming dirt at the top of their voices, what made her kind of people harden and say ‘nigger’ when the word had never crossed their lips before?” What answers can you give her?
16. What kind of reception does Jean Louise receive in the Quarters when she visits Calpurnia, the Finches’ retired housekeeper? How does Calpurnia react to seeing Jean Louise, and what is Calpurnia’s response when Jean Louise asks her how she truly felt about her family? Would Calpurnia have answered the same way if asked that question a few years earlier—or if asked a few years later?
17. Near the novel’s end, Jean Louise questions herself. “Everything I have ever taken for right and wrong these people have taught me—these same, these very people. So it’s me, it’s not them. Something has happened to me.” Do you agree with her? Has she changed—or is she truly the person who she was raised to be? Atticus tells her, “I’ve killed you, Scout. I had to.” What does he mean?
18. Do you think that the white community of Maycomb sees itself as being victimized in Go Set a Watchman? How do these people justify this belief—and how does this belief justify their attitude and behavior toward the emerging Civil Rights movement and those who are a part of it, especially the black people of Maycomb?
19. Go Set a Watchman was written three years after the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. the Board of Education. How did that decision impact the nation and especially the South? What is Jean Louise’s opinion of that decision? What about Atticus’s? How do their responses reflect comments about Supreme Court decisions involving minority rights in our own time? What does this tell us about ourselves as Americans and about our views of race today?
20. Consider the novel’s title, Go Set a Watchman. What is its significance? Why do you think Harper Lee chose this as her title for the book? Though it is fiction, the book is a historical document of its time. What does reading it tell us about the modern Civil Rights movement and its effect on the South? What lessons does the book offer us in understanding our own turbulent times?
21. How have our attitudes about race evolved since the 1950s when Watchman was written? In what ways have we progressed? Is the stain of racism indelible in our national character, or can it eventually be erased? Can it be eradicated for good?
22. Late in the novel, Uncle Jack tells his niece, “Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience.” What wisdom is he imparting to her? Uncle Jack also calls Jean Louise a “turnip-sized bigot.” Is she? Why?
23. Did reading Go Set a Watchman deepen your understanding of To Kill a Mockingbird? How are the two books linked thematically? Talk about the experience of reading Go Set a Watchman. Does it stand as a companion to Mockingbird?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)