Book Review / To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.





Published:     11th July 1960
Publisher:  Harper
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Book 1, To Kill a Mockingbird
Source:  Owned

MY REVIEW

This has always been one of those books that I have been meaning to pick up but haven't got to yet and never had the chance to read it at school.  Honestly, I wasn't sure what to expect.   I wanted to go into this story blind and even though this is a classic and most people have heard about it, I had not heard a great deal apart from the fact that it was a classic.   This book really surprised me and kept me thinking for a great deal of time after finishing the last page.    I think what also helped is that I listened to this on audio book which, for me, added so much more drama to the story I was able to appreciate it more than if I had read the words on a page. 

This is undeniably a very important book for obvious reasons.  The most obvious reason is the issues of race and discrimination that it deals with.    What I liked the most was that we were not following an adult as they either commit or investigate what is going on at the time.  We are following a child who is living in these times where what race you were made a difference to how you were treated.  We follow Scout, who at first I thought was a young boy and then realised a lot later on was a young girl (which added more depth to the story considering the content), whose father is a lawyer who is defending in a case that would change their lives forever. 

This is such an important read and one that should be read by everyone.

Why this book is not taught in all schools, I don't know...