Go Set a Watchman

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, Guardian

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, Independent

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, Independent on Sunday

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 Times

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, Sunday Times

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, Daily Mail

Go Set A Watchman is a powerful and moving novel… The opening chapters are slow and languorous, beautifully setting the scene. Lee’s unadorned style is lit up by the occasional sparkling metaphor.

Vanessa Berridge, Daily Express

A literary masterpiece, and an enjoyable one at that.

Natasha Harding, Sun

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, New Statesman

Equally significant today, and imbued with Lee’s wisdom, humanity and humour.

Justine East, Independent

It ignited a fascinating debate on the place and portrayal of racism in both books, as well as about the magic and hard graft of novel writing.

Justine Jordan, Guardian

The caveats surrounding this companion volume to To Kill a Mockingbird melt away as you read the opening chapters and reacquaint yourself with Lee’s beguiling narrative style – warm, sardonic, wryly funny, a sassy Southern voice…Go Set a Watchman zips along.

Sunday Times

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

Watchman is compelling in its timeliness

Washington Post

Go Set a Watchman provides valuable insight into the generous, complex mind of one of America’s most important authors

USA Today

Harper Lee’s second novel sheds more light on our world than its predecessor did

Time

[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

The voice we came to know so well in To Kill a Mockingbird – funny, ornery, rule breaking – is right here in Go Set a Watchman, too, as exasperating and captivating as ever

Chicago Tribune

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 (whose title is a reference to a Biblical verse about the moral compass) 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. Only in retrospect, only when they’re already here and we’re discussing the issues they raise and the emotions they engender, do we appreciate the beautiful synchronicity that links the historical moment with the individual imagination that so heroically explores it

Chicago Tribune

Go Set a Watchman’s gorgeous opening is better than we could have expected

Vanity Fair