To Kill a Mockingbird (Paperback)

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Amazon.com Review

"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."

Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.

Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Lee's beloved American classics makes its belated debut on audio (after briefly being available in the 1990s for the blind and libraries through Books on Tape) with the kind of classy packaging that may spoil listeners for all other audiobooks. The two CD slipcases housing the 11 discs not only feature art mirroring Mary Schuck's cover design but also offers helpful track listings for each disk. Many viewers of the 1962 movie adaptation believe that Lee was the film's narrator, but it was actually an unbilled Kim Stanley who read a mere six passages and left an indelible impression. Competing with Stanley's memory, Spacek forges her own path to a victorious reading. Spacek reads with a slight Southern lilt and quiet authority. Told entirely from the perspective of young Scout Finch, there's no need for Spacek to create individual voices for various characters but she still invests them all with emotion. Lee's Pulitzer Prize–winning 1960 novel, which quietly stands as one of the most powerful statements of the Civil Rights movement, has been superbly brought to audio. Available as a Perennial paperback. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint, 2007 edition (March 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060935464
• ISBN-13: 978-0060935467
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1,811 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,827 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

203 of 220 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No wonder it's a classic..., November 7, 2001

By	Dianna Johnston "Compulsive Reader" (Joplin, MO) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: To Kill a Mockingbird (Mass Market Paperback)

I just finished this book a few moments ago, and I am completely awed by this story. Harper Lee has done an excellent job bringing this 1930s Alabama childhood to life. I can see why To Kill a Mockingbird has won the Pulitzer Prize, garnered an Academy Award for the movie version, and ultimately become a timely classic enjoyed by many generations.

To Kill a Mockingbird tells the story of two children, sister Scout and brother Jem, and their childhood during three years in the midst of the Great Depression. Scout and Jem spend most of their summers with their summer-neighbor, Dill, making up plays and spying on the town recluse, Boo Radley. During the school year (minus Dill, who goes back home to Mississippi), Scout finds herself in trouble one too many times and struggles with the concept of being a lady, especially when all she wants to do is wear overalls and beat up her classmates.

Then everything changes one fall.... Scout and Jem's father, Atticus Finch, a lawyer in their town of Maycomb, Alabama, is appointed to the defense of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman (although not of the highest caliber), Mayella Ewell. The fact of this case rocks the town of Maycomb, and with Scout and Jem feeling the brunt of their classmates ridicule when they realize Atticus is on Tom's side.

I was simply floored while reading this novel. I wasn't expecting a "classic" to be so readable. Now I know what I've been missing! To Kill a Mockingbird is a piece of our American history that depicts racism and prejudice, childhood innocence, and the perseverence of a man who risked it all to stand up for what he believed in. Wonderful portrayal and one I will read again.

204 of 226 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Let Gregory Peck Take All the Credit, August 16, 2004

By	bensmomma "bensmomma" (Ann Arbor, Michigan) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: To Kill a Mockingbird (Mass Market Paperback)

Somehow my education did not impose on me a reading of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," although I saw the excellent movie based on it several times. What a pleasure to discover, when finally picking up the book in my middle age, that the people who inhabit this book spring fully grown directly from the mind of Harper Lee herself, rather than just the actors in the film.

Harper Lee has written not a single one-dimensional character, and has created a few of the best realized and strongest characters ever put into print: not just Atticus, Jem, and Scout Finch, but also the dignified Calpurnia, the eager Dill, the peaceful but ghostly Boo Radley, even the degraded and predatory Ewell family. These characters jump off the page like in no other novel I can recall. There is no doubt in my mind that these folks are as real as any of the people I see walking down the street, and I feel for Atticus in particular a similar sort of astonished respect as I do for my own father.

If somehow the book itself has passed you by, or if (sadly) it was imposed on you for a class assignment when you were young, revisit it. It's one of the best ever written.

59 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Lawyers Were Children Once Too": To Kill a Mockingbird, July 28, 2002

By	William Errickson, Jr. "Will Errickson" (Raleigh, NC United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: To Kill a Mockingbird (Mass Market Paperback)

Oddly, I'd never read To Kill a Mockingbird as a high school student. Nor had I ever seen the famous film with Gregory Peck. Fortunately, I also avoided learning the entire plot through cultural osmosis. Sure, I knew who Boo Radley was-- didn't I? Atticus Finch... yeah, I know who that is... right?

Boy, was I wrong. Last week I finally decided it'd been long enough, and I sank into Harper Lee's only novel with high expectations. And I was certainly not disappointed. With its slow, warm and evocative opening chapters, Mockingbird starts off like a sulty summer day in the South. Lee depicts a South of "whistling bob white," biscuits and warm milk, and ladies who on the hottest days bathe twice by noon and then douse themselves in lavender-smelling powder.

Jean-Louise Finch, better known as Scout, narrates the story with the keen eye of an adult looking back on a childhood rich with incidents that shaped who she has become. Scout reminded me of some of Carson McCullers's heroines (Member of the Wedding, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter), but without the morbid loneliness and heartbreak. Scout might be described as a tomboy, but that would be doing her a disservice. Her adventures with her older brother Jem, and their dimunitive friend Dill (real name: Charles Baker Harris. "Your name's longer'n you are," Jem points out) evoke the timeless place of childhood.

As for Atticus Finch, what can one say about a father who seems to embody the greatest of virtues? He is tolerant, patient, kind, and understanding. He does not meddle with his children's affairs, he speaks to them as fellow adults (he allows them to call him "Atticus"), and his skill as a lawyer is legendary. Lee presents Atticus in a tough and sensitive manner, so that his believability is paramount.

The other characters in the book are also depicted with great skill: Aunt Alexandra, bane of Scout's existence; Miss Maudie, who gives as good as she gets when harassed by intolerant neighbors; Calpurnia, the ever-present black maid who has as much a hand in Jem and Scout's well-being as Atticus; and of course the Ewells, whose poverty and ignorance help set the plot in motion.

Harper Lee has written a wonderful book that pulses with life, with compassion, and easy good humor. Watching Atticus face down an angry mob set on lynching a black man, or racing with Jem as he escapes gunshots from the Radley house, or sitting with Scout as she forced to join her aunt's church lady reception, or taking that long midnight walk with Jem and Scout, is pure joy; these are scenes that reverberate in the reader's mind and surely in the minds of several generations of readers. I'm glad I can now say I'm one of them.