Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, is publishing a "new" novel on July 14th; Go Set a Watchman is chronologically the sequel to Mockingbird and details the relationship between an adult Scout Finch and her father Atticus long after the controversial trial of Tom Robinson, but Harper Lee actually wrote this story before To Kill a Mockingbird-- Go Set a Watchman contains flashbacks to Scout's childhood, and Lee's editor wisely advised her to write a novel focusing on those flashbacks, and the result is the story that became a staple on middle school curricula across the land . . . anyway, I find Harper Lee incredibly lazy, it's not like she's been polishing this "new" novel for the last sixty years-- she claims that she "lost" the manuscript and that a friend recently "discovered it" (I suppose it's possible that she misplaced the novel, since rumor has it that she's nearly blind, but the most probable scenario is that the royalties from Mockingbird have petered out and she needs some cash to maintain her genteel Southern lifestyle) and so I am warning people not to fall for this ruse engineered by a lazy old bat in a wheelchair (does she even need that wheelchair?) and join my total boycott of this book and the ensuing media events surrounding it; instead, if you're going to read a book by an old bat, then read Skeleton Road by Val McDermid; the book is a fantastic political mystery, and-- more significantly for this particular post-- if you like this book, then you can read one of her twenty-eight other novels . . . so Harper Lee, take that bitter pill and swallow with along with your daily dose of Metamucil-- maybe this prolific literary statistic will inspire you to dust off your Smith Corona, feed in a fresh ribbon, and get back to work.
