To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of those novels I was supposed to read as a youth, but never got around to it. In this case, the consensus is right. Mockingbird Courageously looks at the Jim Crow South and the damage it did to white and black citizens alike. Told from the viewpoint of a precocious girl who has a strong sense of right and wrong, it is reminiscent of Hucklebery Finn in that Lee like Twain uses the innocence of a child to skewer an adult society built on racism and classism, and the adults who sustain it. The characters are alive and real, and the story is exciting even though I have seen the movie and knew what was coming. Now that I have read it once, I imagine Mockingbird will reward my rereading.

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