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To Kill a Mockingbird
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| Part No: | 0446310786 |
| Manufacturer: | Grand Central Publishing |
| MFG Part: | |
| Customer Rating: | 4.5 / 5.0 |
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- ISBN13: 9780446310789
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
"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
The explosion of racial hate in an Alabama town is viewed by a little girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.
| Simply amazing novel | 2010-08-31 | 5 / 5 |
| Harper Lee's book is perhaphs one of the most moving, touching nd genuinley charming tales in literature. The central themes, prejudice, honor and bravery, could come off as moralistic or dry in the hands of someless skilled, but Lee delivers with pure warmth. The grave trial of Tom Robinson (falsely charged with rape by the a family that is the epitome of 'white trash') is balanced with the voice and humorous insights of Scout, the novel's nine-year-old narrator: for all of the import of the trial and the town's divisveness on the race issue, we have Scout's insights, when watching Calpurnia cook, that "there may be some skill in being a girl after all." Each character is brilliantly brought to life, from the graceful Miss Maudie to the enigmatic Boo Radley,
but perhapps none more than Atticus Finch. Perhaps the most honorable character in literature, Atticus (an attorney) takes the unwinnable task of defending Tom Robinson because if he did not, "he would not able to look his children in the eye." Atticus does what is right regardless of personal sacrrifice. This wisdom and heart is immedialtey evident in Jem and Scout, who, almost insincitvely carry themselves with the same honor and sense of right.
But what makes this book great is not just the bravery in the face of hate or the dignity of the Finchs. What makes the book memorable is the charm and humor: the games the children played to coax Boo Radley out of his home; the children's keen observations of the adults around them; and the puppy love tale of Scout and Dill. With each page the characters and the setting come alive and cannot help but evoke a smile. This is a book to read again and again, revisiting just how wonderful it is. |
| To Kill a Mockingbird | 2010-08-30 | 2 / 5 |
| | The copy I received was filled with hand written notes throughout the text. I was very disappointed in this purchase. |
| truly brilliant | 2010-08-29 | 5 / 5 |
| I read this in high school, it was the best book I had ever read. I read it again to my daughter when she was 11 and once again loved it. There was so much more to it than I remembered. It is such a stunning masterpiece on so many levels, this is one book worth reading again and again. My daughter and I have put it on our "books you must read in your lifetime" list (just four books long at this point).
This is a powerful book and one that will stay with you a good long time. |
| Brilliant, and a bit of a tragedy | 2010-08-28 | 5 / 5 |
| I had a bad upbringing, as far as reading went. Most of my teachers let me read whatever they wanted, and the few that assigned anything to me took the path of the-most-boring-is-best. I therefore was made to read "1984", which was over my 14-year-old head, and "Silas Marner", which the whole class thought was boring and badly written. In the last few years I've been slowly catching up with those classics I should have read when I was younger. I tried Scott Fitzgerald (and decided after "The Great Gatsby"--which I liked--not to venture any further), "The Catcher in the Rye" which I expected to hate and liked anyway, "A Confederacy of Dunces" which had me rolling in the aisles, and even Jane Austen, who I enjoyed a great deal more than I expected. Now I turn to "To Kill a Mockingbird". It's one of those books that everyone but me has apparently read. So I guess it's time I caught up with everyone else.
Janet Louise "Scout" Finch is a little girl, during the events of the story. I got the impression that the author was imagining Scout as a slightly older girl, writing this story down for posterity. She has an older brother, and the two of them live with their father, a lawyer, in a small town in Alabama. Their mother's dead. In the summer, a cousin named Dill visits them and the three of them play together. Supposedly, Dill is based on Harper Lee's real childhood friend, Truman Capote, but that's neither here nor there. They are the typical rural children of the era, playing in the street, and spreading rumors and innuendo about their neighbors. At the end of the block there's a strange family with a reclusive son who's in his thirties, but never leaves the house or says anything to anyone, named Boo Radley.
Scout knows her father's a lawyer, and has knowledge of a few things with regards to laws, but she's never really experienced a trial or anything. A third of the way into the book, when you're wondering if it's ever going to really have a plot, kids start to call Scout's father a n----r-lover. Ms. Lee doesn't bother with the hyphens. It turns out that what they're referring to is the fact that Scout's dad, whose name is Atticus Finch, has been assigned to defend a local black man who has been accused of raping a white woman. In Alabama in the 1930's, this is a capitol offense, and he'll surely be executed if he's convicted.
So of course there's the obligatory lynch mob (one of the strongest scenes in the book) where Atticus faces down the less-than-brilliant citizens of the town, followed by the courtroom scene that's rather short, given that the trial of course only takes one day. I won't give away the ending, but the author confronts the obvious issues of racism and class in the 1930's south with a great deal more subtlety and nuance than I expected, and the ending, if a bit surprising, is also very satisfying.
I do have one negative thing to say about this book: it killed the career of what could have been a great novelist. At least that's my opinion. Most any author wants to think the book they're working on is better than the last one they wrote, and this thing won pretty much every award it could, short of the Nobel Prize for literature. It's one of the best-loved books of the last century. It's my belief that this success was a double-edged sword: on the one hand the acclaim was probably pretty heady, but on the other hand, how do you top something as successful as this? It's almost inevitable that a second book wouldn't win another Pulitzer. Anything less would be a step down.
Nevertheless, this is a wonderful book, truly great, and I recommend it highly. |
| A lot to be learned from a classic..... | 2010-08-26 | 5 / 5 |
| | Even in this day and age, this book provides a tremendous opportunity to teach the age-old message of "do the right thing" and "do unto others"! Even kids of the current generation ar emoved by this story. Young and old alike will find it a valuable read ( including better_bargains.com who made purchasing this book a nightmare). |
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