There’s been quite a lot of controversy surrounding this book. For those of you who somehow missed the lead up to its release, Go Set a Watchman was actually the first book Harper Lee wrote, but when she submitted the manuscript, she was advised against publishing that work and instead encouraged to rewrite the story as one that went on to become a seminal read for many people – To Kill a Mockingbird. It was certainly one of my favourite English set works in high school and I reread it as recently as last year. Love. The controversy arose for two major reasons – firstly, if the initial manuscript was ‘rejected’, would the book be any good, or was its release now just a money making effort, and secondly, since Harper Lee is 89 and has not only been notoriously media-shy since the remarkable success of To Kill a Mockingbird, but indeed swore that she would never publish anything again, did she even agree to the publication of Go Set a Watchman at all?

It was this second point that made me slightly hesitant to buy the book. After all, it seems as if none of the correspondence regarding the book’s publication has actually been with Lee herself, but rather with her lawyer. And why would she suddenly, after all these years, decide to publish a ‘failed’ manuscript? I’m not entirely sure I buy the story that it was lost or forgotten about and then rediscovered. I struggle to imagine the author that would forget any piece of work she had written, particularly one that bore the sting of rejection but ultimately lead to the creation of a hugely successful novel – the only one she ever published. Even more concerning is that her sister, who had previously acted to protect Lee’s interests, passed away in late 2014. Opportunistic timing or coincidence? Nonetheless, I could not resist the lure of finding out what happened to Scout and Jem after the closing chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird, and I duly bought a copy of Go Set a Watchman (at ridiculous hardcover price too) a month after its release.

I think it can be both a blessing and a curse for an author to have such a stupendous success with a novel as Lee did with To Kill a Mockingbird. On the one hand, while reading Go Set a Watchman, I definitely felt an intense desire to like the book, purely because of the legacy of the previous work that I had loved so much. On the other hand, having subsequent work compared to a prior success can be unfair and a little harsh at times. I don’t know why the initial manuscript was rejected but I found the writing in Go Set a Watchman to be beautiful, if a little meandering in some places. Lee’s descriptions and characterisations are something to behold. I did, however, struggle a bit with the storyline. It felt a little rushed towards the end, a little like there was no real conclusion to the story. Or not one that satisfied me anyway.

Without giving too much away, Go Set a Watchman sees an older Scout, or Jean Louise now that she is a little too old for her nickname, visiting her father, Atticus, in their deep-South hometown of Maycomb. There isn’t a huge amount that happens, no major action or terrible events unfold. It’s more a gentle, but uncomfortable, tale of a young woman discovering that her father is not the moral compass (or watchman) she thought him to be. It rocks her very understanding of everything she has believed to be true about Atticus, herself, her childhood – her core. Maybe that’s why I struggled a little with the storyline too – Atticus was such a revered character in To Kill a Mockingbird, such a bastion of liberal morals that it was very hard to see him fall from his pedestal. Almost implausible. And the justifications for that fall, or Jean Louise’s perception of it, that conclude the book seemed a little hollow to me.

I suspect that if Harper Lee had been given the opportunity to do a bit of a polish, some of the meandering and inconsistencies would have disappeared. My fears that she may not be thrilled with the novel’s release into the public domain are tempered with my selfish pleasure in being able to read it. And it is definitely worth a read. The beauty of the writing outweighs any discomfort with the plot. After all, some books are meant to be uncomfortable – those are the ones that really make us think. And Harper Lee is certainly no stranger to that.

Much like people, some books come into your life when you really need them. Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult was one of those books for me. By default, it languished on my (rather substantial) To Be Read pile for a few months, after I was fortunate enough to attend a really lovely talk on the book by the author, and then I happened to pick it up at just the right moment, when what I needed most was catharsis. Continue reading

For years one of the favourites (who happens to be the vocalist of the immense SA band, Sugardrive) and I have been saying how incredible it would be if Sugardrive, WONDERboom, Springbok Nude Girls and Prime Circle did a gig together. I still live in hope that a gig like that will happen one day, although it’s very unlikely, but last night the next best thing happened. Continue reading

The parental loves to tell the tale of how, when I was but a few months old, she was holding me on her hip while eating an ice cream and chatting to someone at a picnic – she took her attention off that ice cream for a moment and needless to say I faceplanted straight into it. A chocolatarian from the start, clearly, and one with a fine appreciation for ice cream. Continue reading

The saying goes that you should never judge a book by its cover, and of course that is true. But when I received Tracy Guzeman’s debut novel, The Gravity of Birds, for Christmas last year, the artwork was so exquisite it was like a second set of beautiful wrapping, and I couldn’t wait to get stuck in. The (somewhat) mammoth To Be Read pile delayed that, but I cheated a bit and moved it a few places up the queue. I’m rebellious like that. Continue reading

I fell in love with Barbara Kingsolver’s writing when I devoured what is probably her most famous novel, The Poisonwood Bible. It’s arguably one of the best books I’ve enjoyed, and none of the other works of hers that I have read (all except one of her novels) have ever disappointed. The Lacuna was certainly no different. Continue reading

One of my favourite things about South Africans is our sense of humour. We seem to have an endless capacity to laugh – at ourselves, at each other, at the situations we find ourselves in. Regardless of how tough things get, or how badly our politicians are behaving, you can be sure there will be someone finding the humour within moments. Too soon? No such thing in SA. Continue reading

A little while ago some friends and I decided we needed to take a break from the hustle and bustle of Jo’burg, which can get a tad much for us Durbanites at times, let me tell you. We knew we wanted to go to the Drakensberg, because let’s face it, it’s the best place in the world, but other than that, we weren’t too fixed on a destination. So I let Google work its wonders, and out popped Drakensberg Mountain Retreat. Retreat you say? Sold! Continue reading

The Garden of Burning Sand is Addison’s second book, and I was so thoroughly in love with his first, A Walk Across the Sun, that I simply had to get my hands on it. His debut novel, which tackled the difficult subject of human trafficking in a sensitive and insightful way, was simply beautiful, but The Garden of Burning Sand is even better. Continue reading

South Africa really seems to be hitting the jackpot in terms of number of international bands coming to visit in 2014, and with so many of them being indie, my little heart is quite happy (and my bank account quite empty)! When I heard that Editors would be playing at Oppi Koppi, I was mostly excited, but also a little lacking in enthusiasm to watch them at a festival – not always the best setting to see a favourite band for the first time. And then one of the favourites came up with the idea of going to watch their Cape Town show instead. Genius. This is why I keep him around. Continue reading