Book Review: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

This isn't really a review, as such, because I don't think there could be anything I could say about this book that hasn't been said a million times before. Instead, I'm just going to talk about my general impressions of this book.

I have to say, going in, I was a little apprehensive. Although I did expect to enjoy it, at least part of me thought I would find it boring, and thought that if I did enjoy it, it would only be in a sort of admiring, appreciative way, and I didn't expect to find it especially readable. Despite having read and enjoyed lots of classics this is how I often feel when approaching a classic author for the first time. However, this time (as I mostly am) I was proved wrong!

I didn't actually know that much about this book before I read it. I vaguely knew that it was about racism and centred around a trial of a black man (and I knew what the outcome was), but that was about all. So I was surprised that there was quite a bit more to the story than this, although it was still an important part of it.  It's more a story of a young girl growing up (although she's still pretty young at the end of the novel) and how her experiences and perceptions of the world around her and the people in it change, over the course of a couple of years. The central event of the story is the trial, but it isn't the whole of the story, and quite a lot of other things happen in it too. It's a story about learning to consider things from other people's points of view and to give them the benefit of the doubt - not judging them. It's also very readable; I read the whole book in about four days (which is pretty fast for me). I don't often get completely sucked into books but there were quite a few points when I didn't want to stop reading this. So, I really did love it. If you haven't read this book yet, then you really should.

Rating: 5 out of 5

 

This is the second book I've reviewed from my Classics Club list!