Book Review: To Kill A Mockingbird

I'm a little reluctant to write a review of this classic by Harper Lee. Our book club choice for September, when I was looking for a snappy synopsis for the club website I discovered Amazon has something like 1670 reviews of it. I haven't checked, but I expect I'd find many other sites with multiple reviews, or dissections by learned students of literature. What can I write that they haven't? And yet, I've started a trend on here of giving my own opinion on the club's choices, mainly because it's so hard to make notes on our discussions when we meet to discuss whatever we've been reading, and of late, due to lack of time rather than any waning enthusiasm, my notes for the club site have been somewhat sparse.

So: I liked it. A lot. In fact it's the only book we've read so far for the club (there have been 18 to date) that I've felt compelled to give a score of 10. The attendees score the books out of ten, and I work out the average to give the book a Chorlton Chapters ranking. TKAM came away as the runaway winner, its average being more than half a point higher than the nearest rival. When scoring books previously I'd often given a 9, and wondered what a book would have to do to merit a score of 10. I decided months ago that it wasn't fair to score a book purely on enjoyment. If I did that, I would be artificially narrowing the field of books that I could give a 10. There must, I reasoned, be many books that deserve a mark of 10, irrespective of whether I enjoyed reading them. That a book should score ten only if it's a book that you can't imagine being better in any respect: characterisation; plot; description; pace; moral.

That's why TKAM got my 10. I read it, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I couldn't imagine it being any better, or even any different.

Several things endeared it to me. The evocative description of childhood play was poignantly reminiscent of my own childhood, even though the book is set in America. The fear of passing a certain place (ours was the "witch's house" that had a twitchel running along the side of it); the long hot summer days of school holiday; the observations of adult behaviour and conversation - all beautifully described.

The expert way the story is told through the eyes of 5-year-old Scout (who grows to be eight) without ever needing to step outside her experience to explain adult themes, or things she wouldn't have understood. The subtle messages of bigotry and prejudice that underlie the conversations of the schoolmistress and the ladies at tea. The calming, rock-steady presence of Atticus and the clever way he teaches the children that all is not always as it seems by forcing them to help Mrs. Dubose.

But above all, the moral that even though you know something is wrong, sometimes all you can do is open people's eyes to the wrong. You can't stop it, people will die, but you've sown a seed in their minds and hearts that, though it may take generations to germinate and grow, will eventually make the world a better place. That you must take your chance to do that, no matter the personal cost, simply because it is the right thing to do. It gives others the chance to do the right thing, but whether they do or not is up to them and beyond your power to control, but even knowing that, you still have to do it.