What is it about To Kill A Mockingbird?

[TooTicky]

So many MNers mention it as a favourite on their profiles and I love it too. So what is the attraction?
For me, more than anything, it's the realness - the descriptions, the characters, the dialogue - everything is just so right. Of course it is also politically good and the story riveting all the way through, but it is the exceptional quality of the writing that really makes it for me.
Anyone else?

I agree - it gets under your skin because it feels as if you are being taken aside and quietly told a story, one so rooted in reality that you can see, hear, smell and touch the people and places described. It also describes the world of a child with total conviction.

Every so often I look up Harper Lee on the internet in the vain hope that she has written something else. I suppose it's a hard act to follow though.

I recently found out she worked as Truman Capotes assistant when he was working on In Cold Blood.
Put another side to her character.
Still love To kill a mocking bird

I read it again recently...(I hadn't read it for about 20 years...since school)...and the world of the adults meant so much more to me this time.
Frannys right though...somehow it completely captures childhood perfectly

I love it, it's my fave book. We had to read it at school and then write various essays on it and I found it so interesting.

It is it's 'realness'. You can feel the dusty roads under your feet, the thrilling fear of Boo Radley, the frustrations with the various injustices, the feel of that ham costume made out of chicken-wire!

Truman Capote and Harper were neighbours growing up. The character of Dill is based on Truman Capote as a child.

I love it because it's so memorable, so visual. I haven't read it for years but I can see Boo Radley watching the children from his window, an old lady lying in bed waiting for her morphine while a child reads to her, a middle-aged man raising a shotgun to his shoulder, a little suntanned boy hiding under a bed, an old man sitting on the courthouse steps drinking cola from a brown paper bag with a straw...

You don't forget even though the years pass.

I agree anorak, it's amazing how much detail you remember. Odd things like the maid being called Calpurnia and Scout not liking rutabaga's and the schoolboy with cooties!

You see f&z a vital fact that surely i should have known, particularly when we studied TKAMB as GCSE set book for english lit.
We did seem to more interested in 'themes' however, didn't learn any rockn solid stuff like the TC and HL link

Atticus. Just makes one swoon.

Darrell I was a bit of a Truman Capote nerd so am not sure if that is a widely known thing or not

We've just finished this for our bookclub and nearly everyone loved it, DH was very excited when I told him I was reading it as he says it's probably his fav book - I didn't really like it much - it was a good book but not up there with my favs, felt maybe I missed something but it was just ok for me

He said of her, "Oh yes, she was the kid who was always trying to get her hands in my pants,".

I know just what you mean; I don't re-read it that often, I read loads of other stuff...but what is it about Mockingbird? I suppose it must be extraordinarily well-written, as you say. And there is both an utter rightness about some of it (Atticus as a straight-shooter: that incredible moment, which moves me to tears every time I read or even recall it, where Scout's told in court "Stand up: your daddy's passin'") and the incredible, intractable wrongness endemic to the society it writes about.

Agree about Atticus Lionheart
Oh god yes...and the straight shooter bit

Oooh, lots of people on my thread!!
TKAMB is probably the only book we force-read in school which I really enjoyed and have gone back to. Regularly.

We only studied American literature for my O Level (gee, thanks for that) and I hated all of it except for one Robert Frost poem (promises to keep) and TKAMB. It was such a treat after Grapes of Bloody Wrath and Of Mice And Men. I can't hear the name Lenny without wanting to hit something.

Did it for GCSE.

It just affected me.

Think I may dig it out actually, haven't read it in about oooohh 6 months.

Book: Did it for GCSE English lit. Loved the book and have recently reread it and given it to DH to read. He loved it too.

Film: Two words. Gregory Peck!

It also manages, extraordinarily, to be principled yet not pious - and not just in the character of Atticus either. Look at the way the aunt (whose name I've forgotten just at the moment) is both a PITA insisting that Scout behaves like a Lady (and who states that she doesn't really agree with Atticus representing Tom) and capable of using that Southern Lady quality to return to a teatable and behave with the utmost steely decorum after the news of Tom's death.

I think that's the trick MI, that it would be so easy for the characters in a book with that theme to be stereotypes, but they're not - like when Scout talks to the lynch mob and shows how they are just ordinary people.

the style of writing is so evocative

It's just the perfect book for me. I read it in school and knew it was good, then re-read it at uni, thought it was amazing and now dh is a massive fan too. Recently saw the show at the theatre too, which was good. I'd like to see a modern version of the film made, just think it would be interesting - but no one rivals Gregory Peck.

Can't put my finger on why I love it so much, but it just moved me in places, humbled me in others. Fab.