Has anybody read this yet? I'm afraid to, because I don't want to ruin To Kill A Mockingbird. I keep hearing or reading crappy reviews, but then I'll read one that says, "no just take it for what it is" or something. For the bad ones, I can't tell if the reviewer thinks it's a lousy novel, or thinks what the characters are against how they were is lousy.
I haven't read it, but my impression from what I've read about it is that it is essentially the rough draft of To Kill A Mockingbird. http://www.bradwarthen.com/2015/07/take-it-easy-yall-atticus-is-still-atticus/
It has sold, in one week, 1.1 million copies. To put that into perspective Stephen King's Under The Dome sold 660,000 in its entire run, Fight Club around 400k, Tucker Max's IHTSBIH took almost 3 years to sell 1.5 million, Gone Girl has sold 3 million in three years. This is a tremendous number. Books do not sell like music. When they do, it's a big deal. Most of the stuff you see on the NYT sell in the 30-50k range per week. The only reason I want to read it is because of the hype. Mockingbird is a wonderful book and will always be a benchmark for the lasting power and political power of the novel. I am siding with all the reviews that say it's shitting all over the original. Consider this Harper Lee's retirement fund, and she deserves it. Even if the book stinks on ice, the woman gets a pass.
I pre-ordered it to read the day it came out. I wouldn't say it's bad. It is technically her first novel, so you need to take it with that grain of salt. The thing that people are getting up in arms about is that is turns Atticus into a human being instead of the symbol of everything that is true and right in the world. It's also about 1950s Alabama and everything that comes with that. They introduce characters that are not in TKaM and some of those characters are annoying or seem to be thrown into the story out of nowhere. It s not To Kill a Mockingbird. People need to accept that it will no live up to the legacy of that book.