Two siblings and a holiday friend spend their summer vacations together in the siblings‘ home town. Over the years, the children challenge each other about a neighbourhood house, Radley Place: as rumours go, it is inhabited by infamous “Boo“ Radley who used to be locked up for years by his father and who is now blamed for just about everything that goes wrong.

One year, the siblings‘ father, a lawyer, will take up the case to defend a man accused of rape. The victim is white – the accused is black and it is the time of the Great Depression, in the south of the United States.

There is so much that is just great about this all-time classic which I have owned for quite some years and re-read often, but this is the first time I write about it. Thus thinking deeper about it, I have come to realize about how clever the story has been made up:

It may really be read as a story for children and for grown-ups, and this happened a long way before “Young Adult“ was invented as a genre. The story is told by the first person narrator Jean Louise “Scout“ Finch, reflecting back to the time when she was in school grades 1-3 – the author takes her time to inform the reader about “Scout“ being a girl, who is something of a tomboy anyway – so a perfect read for boys and girls. As the story is told in retrospective, as mentioned, perfect for men and women, too. A long time before “black lives matter“ movement was know about, a white author writes about positive and non-flat black protagonists, here, the cook Calpurnia who is like a mother for the children, the preacher, and several others. You might even find hints about single parenting, for the siblings‘ father Atticus grows up the kids on his own, as his wife died of a heart attack when Scout was only 2, but that would be a bit too far-fetched.

Not only the summer’s heat will be up when a black man will be defended by white lawyer Atticus against the general prejudice, challenging racial barriers, and taking its toll on the children, too. p 82 ‘This time we aren’t fighting the Yankees, we’re fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they’re still our friends and this is still our home.’

Full recommendation. Enjoy the clever wit in most every page, like when first-grader Scout must learn from her new teacher to forget all the reading she knew before school “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.“ p 14 Learn about the place and neighbours, like “There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one…“ p 51 All the while, up to now, the portrait of lawyer Atticus remains to be considered a role model for both, wise father and lawyer for generation (and, by the way, watch the movie, too ;-)

‘I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.’ p 118