It’s been days since I read Go Set A Watchman and I can’t stop thinking about it. In some ways, the novel is excruciating. The story takes place twenty years after To Kill A Mockingbird. Beloved characters have aged, or died, and the house that Jean Louise (Scout) Finch grew up in has become an ice cream parlour, but those characters that remain are true to themselves. Dr Finch is still batty and wise, Jean Louise remains feisty, Aunt Alexandria is still as inflexible as her own corsets, and Calpurnia remains a code-switching, disappointed mother. The central struggle in this novel revolves around the breaking of idols; both familial and cultural. The myth of The Father must give way to the truth of the father (in culture and flesh) if the child is ever to grow into something independent and new.

In To Kill A Mockingbird, we viewed…