The book is a follow-on from it's much acclaimed predecessor, To Kill a Mockingbird , and uses the same voice to carry us through the story: that of Miss Jean-Louise Finch. The beloved character from my favourite teenage read has now grown up and lives a life of her own outside of the confines of the fictional Maycomb society. 
 The book opens as she returns to her childhood hometown by train, and I felt that I was borne along with her on her journey as I also felt a return to my childhood. As the recognizable landmarks revealed themselves to Jean Louise, I felt a shift in my psyche and a return to a freer, unencumbered version of myself. Time reversed itself. I soon realized that Lee uses this tactic often to gently aligns Jean-Louise and her reader by co-ordinating our experiences and viewpoint. 
 This book is the grown-up big sister of it's famous little sibling and acts as a continuation of the themes and story line portrayed in To Kill a Mockingbird (despite allegedly being the original draft of the first novel). Time has shifted and so to has the world. This novel deals with the altered dynamics of a society struggling to hold on to its identity in a time of new, political turmoil. The repressed and segregated 'Blacks' are on the brink of facing a future where they could potentially hold equal status with their White brothers, and a time of freedom, previously denied them, is beginning to dawn. 
 The book is a political and historical assessment of a turbulent time in American history. It is also so much more than that. It is an empathetic insight into the mind of an individual that represents the anxieties held by a society that faced a future where they did not dominate the societal food chain. It acts as a reminder that although we may believe ourselves fully grown, we are all still babies to the world. 
 All that being said, the book actually holds little content and I felt it a little drawn out with unnecessary conversation in parts. The politics in this book could spark debate for centuries (hence my four stars), just as Lee's first novel did, but the actual plot does not even fill one whole sentence: Jean Louise returns to Maycomb, is sickened, distressed and uncomprehending to the changes to her safe little world, fights with her father over their differing views concerning race, agree to disagree, the end. 
 It was interesting to go back to my childhood world yet it was also almost heartbreaking to see my beloved old friends alter into older versions of themselves that I cannot fully comprehend, or like. As a modern being it is with disgust that I view Atticus backing a movement to hinder the progression of race equality; with repulsion that I listen to Jean-Louise vehemently profess that she would never consider marrying a man of colour; and it is with great sadness that I realize that these characters are simply on the wrong side of history. It is with a sad finality that I divorce myself from my childhood heroes and heroine that once taught me the difference between conformity and morality and are now attempting to sell the notion that they can sometimes amount to the same thing. 
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