Hype grows as Harper Lee’s first chapter released
And Scout’s older brother, Jem, apparently has died.
Go Set a Watchman begins with Scout, otherwise known as Jean Louise Finch, returning by train to Lee’s legendary Maycomb, Alabama, on one of several annual visits she makes from New York, where she is greeted by young Henry Clinton.
The first chapter ran in yesterday’s editions of The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.
Go Set a Watchman, the most unexpected second novel in memory, is coming out on Tuesday. It takes place in the 1950s, 20 years after the setting for To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee’s Pulitzer prizewinning book. US publisher HarperCollins has said that orders for Go Set a Watchman are the highest in company history and bookstores worldwide are planning events to celebrate the book’s release.
Anticipation and apprehension have surrounded news of the book since it was announced in February. The surprise and ecstasy of a new work from Lee have been shadowed by suspicions the book doesn’t measure up to Mockingbird and was approved without the 89-year-old author’s full awareness.
Lee has poor hearing and vision and resides in an assisted living facility in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. However, her lawyer Tonja Carter; literary agent Andrew Nurnberg; and publisher have said she is delighted the book is coming out. State officials, responding to at least one complaint of possible elder abuse, determined she was alert and capable of deciding on the release of Watchman.
To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, is set in the 1930s in the fictional town of Maycomb and introduced Atticus Finch, Scout, Boo Radley and other beloved literary characters.
The book was adapted into an Oscar-winning movie starring Gregory Peck as Atticus and has become standard reading in schools and other reading programmes, with worldwide sales topping 40m copies.
Lee has not spoken to the media in decades and her absence from any promotion for Watchman marks a rare time that such a high-profile work is being released without the participation of a living author.
