Harper Lee will publish a second novel

Juneteenth, by Ralph Ellison. He worked on his second novel after Invisible Man for something like four decades. After he died, they condensed the 2000 or so pages down to around 400.

 

I have no interest in the book right now, and mostly for those reasons.

 

Incidentally, of all the reviews I've read, only a couple have suggested GSAWM is really inferior work, except in direct comparison to TKAMB. (And those reviews seemed like preemptive hit pieces: they were going to say the book sucked and was a disgrace regardless of its actual content.)

Most reviews I've seen say it was erratic, needed some more comprehensive editing, sometimes fell into cliche, and (yes) doesn't come up to the standard of TKAMB.

 

Write, can you take it out of the library? You'd get to read it without adding to the coffers. FWIW, I'm not reading it because I have no interest in it.

 

I could, I guess, but right now, I'm not even wanting to read the book because of what I think is a money grab that is its sole reason for being. Just the principle, I guess.

I certainly will need to read the book, however, in order to answer some questions regarding how Atticus Finch apparently could be/could have become somebody entirely different from the character presented in "To Kill A Mockingbird." Before "Go Set A Watchman" came out and once I'd heard that Jem had died, I theorized, myself, that perhaps his beloved son's death had involved a black person and that maybe that had turned Atticus into somebody else entirely regarding his attitude, mind and heart with regard to African Americans and their treatment. Since that is apparently not the case, I'll admit that I'm not sure I will be able to reconcile the differences in the characters. I'm not sure I'll be able to attribute them simply to a change of perspective on the part of a now grown-up Scout.

 

If you approach it like an album of outtakes and rough cuts, it's a mostly enjoyable read, although it feels more like a series of (well-done) scene and character sketches. It took me about 50-60 pages to warm up to it, became fairly engrossing, then collapsed into a shambles over the last 30 or so pages.

What it left me with was an appreciation for the editor(s) who got a first-timer's promising but uneven manuscript, found the gold nugget inside and then helped turn an interesting story into a classic.

As for Amasa Lee, he had the opposite transformation of Atticus - a segregationist who changed his views as Mockingbird came to life.

Harper Lee’s Father, Inspiration for Atticus Finch, Changed His Views on Segregation - WSJ