To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

What a joy to have time to reread things. I can‘t actually remember when I did read this book first but the rereading was quite wonderful.

This story of the trial of a black man for the rape of a white girl is told through the innocent eyes of young Scout, daughter of Atticus Finch, the lawyer who is defending the man. Of course it is much more than this, indeed a portrait of southern American society in the 1930s from the ignorant ‘white trash’ families through to the old plantation families of the south with the black population caught somewhere in between.

You could write a thesis – and I’m sure it’s been written many times over – about what Harper Lee is saying in this book and I’m not even going to try to go into it here other than to say that essentially it is a story about being human, about being compassionate, and about the struggle that young people face when they are faced with the ugliness of people’s minds. Five stars, of course