Ashley

To be honest, I picked up the book at book store as it cover read ‘Pulitzer Prize Winner’. I had never heard of the author and vaguely remembered reading the book’s name somewhere. I never thought I would be finishing it in one go and end up recommending it to others. Books never get old to review, isn’t it ?

The book starts with general description of social life a 7 year old girl Jean Louis Finch aka “Scout”, describing her adventures in the neighborhood with her elder brother Jeremy Finch aka Jem and friend Dill. Their father Atticus Finch is lawyer in local court, soft spoken, true to his ethics. Though not like sporty like other fathers, he is very open to his children.

The name of book is used as metaphor for the theme of the book. The children’s father once tells them that it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird because it never does harm anyone. The book depicts their father’s battle against the system at that time to save a colored man accused of a crime he had never done. The story is set in mid 1930s, in an imaginary place called Maycomb in the American state of Albama. It was a when a man’s character was still judged on basis of color of his skin and some part of society was not considered as human beings. Atticus tries to put in a little bit from his side to change the situation without any open support from the so called sophisticated world.

The narration style of the author is very engaging. You do feel as if it were described by young girl of age 7-9. I started with the first page and couldn’t put down till the last page. The three main characters are very elaborately described and you get good picture of every personality. Innocently but acutely, the little girl talks about how hypocritical and unjustified the social structure was. After finishing, it makes me wonder… its been more than half a century since the book was written and the social situation is not much different. There are still fights going on all over the world based on cast, language, religion, color of skin; sickening things for a logical mind and there seems no end.

I did some searching around about the book and found out that this was the only book published by the author Harper Lee. There was also movie made with same name with Gregory Peck in the role of Atticus Finch. He won Academy Award for his performance and the character was voted as no. 1 Greatest Hero of American film by the American Film Institute. Read more about it here.

This book is sure worth a read. Now I wish I would get to see the movie soon :-).