I studied To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in secondary school and unsurprisingly, I really enjoyed the book, since it was a stirring portrayal of how we can choose to act against racism even when we’re living in a deeply racist society. When Go Set A Watchman came out, I followed enough of the controversy that even though I really loved To Kill a Mockingbird, I didn’t really feel like going out and getting the book.

But since my friend offered to lend me a copy (along with another book that she wasn’t reading), my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to read the book.

Warning: there will be spoilers up ahead because I want to talk about the second half of the book. Skip my review if you prefer not to be spoiled!

Well, I can see why this was heavily criticised. Part of the charm of To Kill a Mockingbird was Scout’s innocence and well, she’s just annoying here even though she’s supposed to be two years younger than me. Having just returned from New York for a visit to Maycomb, Scout is annoyingly “Not Like Other Girls” and frankly, the first half of the book where she was adjusting back to life in Maycomb was uncomfortable. Not only is nothing much happening, there’s also so much casual racism going on in how they address African Americans and the NAACP that it was uncomfortable to read.

And then the book got more interesting and also more uncomfortable. Scout follows Atticus to a meeting where she realises that he’s on some kind of council that is working to prevent integration and to prevent African-Americans from accessing their rights. Given that I read To Kill a Mockingbird as a child and thus had this view of Atticus as a non-racist person, seeing him believe that African-Americans are backwards and incapable of utilising the rights and privileges of a citizen was a shock. It’s also a shock to Scout, who has idolised her father and the rest of the book is about how Scout deals with this revelation.

Unfortunately, there is no happy ending here. Atticus is still a racist in his views of a large section of his fellow countrymen and the only thing that Scout learns is that her father is not perfect. Yes, he loves the law and yes, he did defend Tom Robinson (successfully, in Go Set A Watchman) but he holds terrible views of his own. This book is about realising that our parents can hold terrible viewpoints and not about the fact that racism was bad. I can see where Harper Lee was going with this manuscript but honestly, I think that revising this story into To Kill A Mockingbird was the right decision. We’re more or less going to grow up and realise that our parents are human and I don’t think we need books for that specifically, but we do need books to remind us that we can be better than what society tells us to be.

Honestly, if I didn’t know this was the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, and if I hadn’t already read that book and formed an image of Atticus as a good person first, I wouldn’t be able to understand the ending. I think that the reason why I felt the same shock as Scout was because I had the same view of Atticus as Scout and if Go Set A Watchman was my first introduction to him, I would not reacted the way she did. For this reason, I think Go Set A Watchman is a much weaker story than To Kill A Mockingbird – apart from the change in theme, the shock and resolution of the book seem to depend on the reader having read To Kill a Mockingbird and that’s not ideal for me.

People who loved To Kill a Mockingbird don’t need to read this. If you want to, you can, but the book’s merit is really as a comparison to the final form and not really because of the story it contains.