Jean Louise Finch, the child narrator of the
author’s iconic “To Kill a Mockingbird” returns in this companion piece,
recently published but written and set in the 1950s.
Here Jean Louise is in her mid-twenties,
working in New York, but back to visit her family in Maycomb, Alabama.
Much has changed in the sixteen years since
the trial and acquittal of Tom Robinson. A world war abroad and, at home a
civil rights movement that threatens the southern whites’ way of life, while
promising more than it can really deliver to the negro population.
Jean Louise is discomforted by the
resistance she sees to what she considers progress; more shocking is the
discovery that her father, Atticus, and her on-off local boyfriend, Henry, are both
attending meetings of the Citizens Council. This self-appointed group discuss
tactics to frustrate the diktats of the Federal Government and the pressure of
the NAACP (never expanded in the book to its full - National Association for
the Advancement of Coloured People).
The book develops into two strands. Jean
Louise’s reminiscences fill in gaps from her childhood and adolescence (when
she went by the nickname of Scout), and these work well evoking the voice
familiar from Mockingbird.
Meanwhile in real time she rails against her
father and family; her politics and their pragmatics have no common ground and
she is bewildered and disorientated by Atticus’ failure to live up to her expectations.
This strand is less appealing, the adult voice lacking both the charm and
clarity of youth (such is growing up).
The political arguments are of historic interest
now, but the timeless issue is the changing relationship between a daughter and
her father, as her childhood hero appears to have clay feet. But appearances
can be deceptive.
Watchman (the conscience is the watchman of
the soul) was never going to rival Mockingbird, but it still makes for an
interesting read.
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