The reclusive author of To Kill a Mockingbird says she never gave her approval to a new memoir that portrays itself as a rare, intimate look into the lives of the writer and her older sister in small-town Alabama.

HARPER LEE, the tight-lipped author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has issued a statement through her sister’s law firm saying that she had nothing to do with a forthcoming book written about her by a former Chicago Tribune reporter.