Product Description

'Shoot all the Bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a Mockingbird.'A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #273954 in Books
• Published on: 1988-10-31
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 288 pages

Truman Capote
`A touching book; and so funny, so likeable'

Bookman
`Her book is lifted…into the rare company of those that linger in the memory...'

Sunday Times
`There is humour as well as tragedy in this book, besides its faint note of hope for human nature...'

Customer Reviews

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
'To Kill a Mockingbird' is one of the best books I have read. I was moved to tears when finishing the last page. It is read through the eyes of Scout, a young girl, living in Maycombe, with her brother and father. Her father, Atticus, is a lawyer, who defends a black man accused by a white family. The book explains about predjudice in the 1930's, deep in the Southern States of America, and has a wonderful story line. The book tells of the events before, during and the aftermath of the trial of Tom Robinson, the man accused.
Many of the first chapters are about Boo Radley, a man locked up by his family, for committing a crime. We discover more about him as the book goes on. The book also has a wonderful finish.
The book is one that will stay with me for the whole of my life.

An absolute jewel of a book
Sometimes it just happens. You come across a book in a bookshop about which you have heard so much but just never got round to reading it. On impulse, you buy it. Hence my introduction to Harper Lee's timeless classic "To Kill a Mocking-Bird". In danger of stating the obvious, this is an absolute jewel of a book, beautifully written, profound, compelling and highly evocative. My only regret is not reading it 30 years ago.

If you only ever read one book....
....you should read this one. Literature is a very personal thing, and there's more to it than the prima facie quality of the story, the characters, the setting, etc etc. More important than any of these things, is the point in your own life when you read a particular book and the relevance it has to you. You don't have to be Boo Radley or Atticus Finch, that's not it at all; but there's something in you at certain times in your life, when something like this picks you up and sweeps you along.

That's why, for me, this is the best book ever written. It captured and captivated me at a certain point in my life; and I'm taken back there whenever I re-read it. Very few other books have achieved the same feat; Moonfleet by J Meade-Falkner, Dickens' Great Expectations, Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and George Eliot's The Mill on The Floss.

Try them all and maybe they'll capture you like they did me. After all, it would be a shame if all you had ever read was Tom Clancy....