Scott Turow
Criminal lawyer, and author of the bestselling novels Innocent and Presumed Innocent
I think a lot about Atticus Finch, particularly in contrast to contemporary portrayals of lawyers. Atticus reflects an era when we were still willing to think of lawyers as paragons. He is a committed single father, and a courageous lawyer willing, in the era of Jim Crow, to represent an innocent African-American accused of a crime that has incensed his neighbours. He is even, at least so far as his daughter perceives, entirely chaste. Probably because we now have so much more interaction with the law and lawyers, both in the U.S. and Canada, we are no longer willing to view attorneys this way.
Malcolm Gladwell
Author of Outliers and What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures
When Scout asks her father, Atticus Finch, whether it is okay to hate Hitler, he answers blandly that it is not okay to hate anyone. When she asks him about the Ku Klux Klan, he shrugs them off as a “political organization” that “couldn’t find anyone to scare.” When Walter Cunningham leads a lynch mob to the county jail to try to murder Tom Robinson, Finch calls Cunningham “basically a good man” who “just has his blind spots along with the rest of us.” And then, of course, there is Finch’s reluctant defence of Robinson, which comes down to the rather lame claim that Robinson’s accuser was white trash who asked for it. Call me crazy, but I prefer my heroes to have a pulse.
Louise Penny
Author of the Armand Gamache mysteries
I was fairly late to it. I was in my mid-20s when I read To Kill a Mockingbird. But I’m not sure there is a book in the 25 years since that really grabbed me like that one. And I honestly couldn’t for the life of me tell you what it was. I’ve loved a lot of books since, obviously, but that one really got to me. ... The story itself is almost mythic, it’s not like it’s breaking that much new ground. It clearly fed into all of my personal beliefs and convictions about having the courage to be the dissenting voice in society rather than joining the crowd, which is so much easier to do. That’s a struggle I have and one I don’t always win. So it’s a real inspiration.
Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Author of the novel Secret Daughter
To Kill a Mockingbird is my favourite kind of book: the kind that transcends its story to tackle the big issues of its time – poverty, justice, class structure, racism. It illustrates how members of the same human race can be capable of both shameful behaviour and great heroism, all within deeply real, and therefore flawed, characters. By telling its story through the eyes of a child, Harper Lee wisely shows us that these people, and these issues, are ones we can recognize all around us, at any time in history. And this is why it rightfully is as powerful today as it was 50 years ago.
Susan Swan
Author of What Casanova Told Me and The Wives of Bath
The sad truth is that hardly any Canadian books are taught in our schools any more. Budgets have been cut so much that teachers rely on dog-eared copies of school texts like this one that have been around for half a century. That's the real scandal – which has nothing to do with the value of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Miguel Syjuco
Novelist, author of Ilustrado
Atticus Finch is a man I aspire to be like, morally, sartorially, professionally, personally. Greying temples, good suits, grand ethics and a great defining moral conflict – what more could a young man hope to grow into? Even the fact that among readers Atticus has detractors in addition to his fans means he was on the right track. His presence in our social consciousness reminds us that we could all be more, that we can ask more of our heroes, and that fiction itself can impress deep lessons on all of us to use in real life. Has it really been 50 years? Wow. I've just looked over at my copy in my bookshelf and made a mental note to re-read the book for the umpteenth time.
