TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD BY HARPER LEE, RANDOM HOUSE, $21.95.
Fifty years old. Thirty million copies sold. Does Harper Lee’s classic of injustice and courage in a small town in the Deep South really warrant this celebratory edition? Can it be as good as we remember from school? Yes and even better.
The familiar tale of lawyer Atticus Finch’s defence of a black man charged with a white girl’s rape, told through the eyes of his children, Scout and Jem, works on every level. As courtroom drama. As coming of age story. As exposé of race and class. And as simple character study – the noble Atticus, the vicious Bob Ewell, the lost soul that is Boo Radley and, of course, the gossipy dowagers of Maycomb melting in the heat until “by nightfall, they were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum”. This is the only book Harper Lee ever wrote and it’s pretty much perfect: funny, wise and soul-deep. Happy birthday, may we read and re-read it forever.
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