Project Watchman

I, like many thousands of my contemporaries, spent a few months in that tired old town called Maycomb before sitting GCSEs. I think initially we were as much intrigued by the dialect and entertainments of the characters as the plot, but I certainly grew to enjoy the work. I only read it myself once thereafter, on an ice-cold evening between colleges, which must've been a few years out of secondary school.

I'd heard about Watchman in the media of course, and it's odd, because I wasn't compelled to pick it up. At least, I didn't think I was. And yet this morning, I was between books. Then, with only four minutes before I signed off work, I decided what the hell? And transferred it with all due haste to my ereader before leaving. I read the first chapter on the way home, completed my evening activities and put my daughter to bed, and finished it in the bath with a drink.

I found it a rather poignant experience. My own memories of reading Mockingbird are full of classroom experiences, old friends and teachers, a life I seem to have left behind. I think the fourth section was my favourite, Scout's huge, all-encompassing feelings of injustice and hurt and hate and loss are powerful. But the whole work holds the same message, tone, and compelling voice of Mockingbird; indeed I came away feeling I'd seen another facet to the prism of life. Watchman is another coming of age story, isn't it? I can't say Mockingbird felt in any way childish, but this certainly hit home in a different way to me now. It's perhaps not as immediately endearing, certainly not as easy to get into, but I think anyone who read Mockingbird will want to read this, just to know a little of the lives we've seen before.