Holiday Reading

 Finally I've read two books which languished on the "must-read" list for ages. The first I picked up at the NT bookshop when we took Liz and the girls to the Easter Trail at Sheringham, the second was on the mobile library van last week.

Go set a watchman - this is Harper Lee's sequel to "To kill a mockingbird". TKAM is a book I have loved for over half a century, and think the film with Gregory Peck is a wonderful adaptation. This book tells how Scout [Jean Louise] now grown, and living in New York, returns to Maycomb for a visit. Her brother Jem died a while before, and everything has changed. 

I found the book unsettling and vaguely depressing. She realises that Atticus, the father she idolised in her childhood, is not the man she thought he was. And attitudes seem to have changed in the town - not for the better, in her view. 

Yes, it is perceptive, in the description of how someone realises that the person she has known and loved all her life has apparently developed some bad beliefs. Jean Louise is so conflicted, and feels an outsider. 

Maybe the book is a true reflection of attitudes in Alabama back then. But I did not enjoy it. I found myself struggling to finish it  so only**

Maggie O Darrell's Hamnet  won the 2020 prize for women's fiction. I couldn't put this down. The first explains that in 1596, a boy called Hamnet died in Stratford Upon Avon, aged 11, and four years later his father wrote a play.

[Hamlet/Hamnet were interchangeable spellings]

This is a very clever take based on these known facts - in which Maggie writes the back story ... She uses other facts I already knew about the bard [his wife was older then him, his mother was called Mary, his father a Glover, and in his will he leaves his "2nd best bed" to his widow] This was a worthy prizewinner, I rate it *****.  I found it a gripping read - and it certainly took my mind off my injuries!

Thank you for all the kind words yesterday. Much of the day was spent with the NHS. I am so grateful for all the excellent treatment received.  Things are improving slowly.