NARRATOR:
Set in the deep south of America in the 1930s, To Kill A Mockingbird is a tale told through the eyes of a child, eight-year-old Scout. Her story is of three years in the life of her brother, Jem, and their lawyer father Atticus. One summer, their idyllic life is disrupted by the trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Soon, Scout witnesses an adult world full of prejudice, violence and hypocrisy which not only tests loyalties but places her father at the centre of a desperate struggle for justice.
JENNIFER BYRNE:
OK, well, bless you, Val, for giving us this present. Tell us why it has endured so long and so well.
VAL MCDERMID:
I think there's lots of reasons why it's endured. It deals with big, important issues, it's true. It deals with issues of class, race, it deals with issues about prejudice, about decency, honesty, truth, what it takes to be courageous and stand up for what you believe in. Those are like the big ideas that underpin the book. But what is at the heart of this book is a voice that charms us and draws us in. It's not Scout writing at eight years old, but it's Scout writing, looking back at what it was like to be eight years old and seeing the world through those eyes and the gradual revelations, the gradual understanding is something I think that draws us in. We've all been children, we've all gone through that experience of suddenly blindly understanding what it is that's happening around.
JENNIFER BYRNE:
You, I was interested, Pierre. You didn't need to read it again cos it's already part of your soul. It's actually helped shape you.
DBC PIERRE:
I feel that that's an incredibly important book, and, remember, I was growing up just over the border from America, largely with American school friends and what have you. So I read it as if I were there in a certain way. It didn't, at first, occur to me that it was so much about race and courage et cetera - this, for me, was always a look at humanity. And I found it a thing of genius, I was so touched by it.
MARIEKE HARDY:
Oh, I mean, I think it's a part of... It becomes a part of the soul of everyone who reads it, really. And I mean, I was slightly worried that we were doing it for that exact reason that it might have just been 15 minutes of us all nodding and smiling at each other and saying what a great piece of work it was. So I'm hoping Jason Steger has something quite contentious to state. (LAUGHS) "I loathe this piece of rubbish!" I mean, it's always a mark of a beautiful book when you pick it to pieces in school and it still resonates with you as an adult.
JENNIFER BYRNE:
It survived school, yes.
MARIEKE HARDY:
You don't even approach it with trepidation. You don't even go, "Oh, God! I don't want to go back into that world again cos I wrote countless essays on it. It was just..." I think reading it as an adult, I appreciated much more the sense of place that I missed the first time around. It's just, you are completely within this community from the get-go and you never leave it. It's wonderful.
JENNIFER BYRNE:
And it completely pulls you in. The life of Maycomb and the... Yeah, the different people. Fully hated...
JASON STEGER:
I loathed it. No, no, I loathed it, actually. I think it's... I really, I loathed it, you know. Atticus is too good... No, it's a great book. It's a fantastic book. And I love reading again. I mean, it's a long time since I read it and I was struck by not so much this sort of stuff about racism. I was struck by the class differences, the stuff she deals with, with the white trash and the Ewells and the Cunninghams who are all characters in it. But also the really deft way that she gets these... She describes some of the characters, some of the old ladies in Maycomb. It's so, so well done. I mean, in a sense, I don't want to still go on about it reminding me of this or that. But the accuracy of the childhood description reminded me very much of Dickens, particularly David Copperfield, the first bit of David Copperfield. And also the way that Harper Lee catches characters in just sort of three or four lines.
JENNIFER BYRNE:
The old lady line I love, "By nightfall, they were like soft teacakes with frosting, sweat and soft talcum."
VAL MCDERMID:
And I think one of the things that's important about this book and bringing up again, I mean, yes, we are all probably gonna just sit here and say it's fantastic, it's terrific. But I think it's important that we carry on introducing this book to the next generation of readers and the next generation of readers because this is a book that I think people can read quite young and it's a book that will open their eyes into thinking about all sorts of different issues. I gave it to my godson a couple of years ago when he was 12, 13 and he read this and he was just jaw-dropped and he was talking about the issues, he was talking about the book, he was talking about the writing for weeks afterwards. And we were actually just away in America in the summer just before I came here and he said to me over breakfast one morning, he said, "Do you know, that's still my favourite book."
MARIEKE HARDY:
Do you think there's actually a fear that it will die out, though? I mean, it has lasted such a long time.
VAL MCDERMID:
I don't think it's about dying out. I think it's just reminding ourselves that it's there. You know, I mean, there are so many books out there, so many books we all enjoy. If we're readers, we're always finding new books, enthusing about, "This is the book I read last week," "This is the book I read last month." And sometimes in the slipstream, we forget to say that we should still be...
JENNIFER BYRNE:
The old glasses can get lost. But let me put...
JASON STEGER:
Sorry. No, I was just gonna say, it's important because of what it says but it doesn't do it in a sort of didactic way. It's not preaching it in any way.
JENNIFER BYRNE:
It's funny! Very.
JASON STEGER:
And it's great.
VAL MCDERMID:
It is funny, yes. That lovely, wry humour that runs through it.
DBC PIERRE:
Do you know, there's some very interesting facts about Nelle Harper Lee as well? Her own father was a lawyer, I think he was a commercial lawyer but there came a moment when he defended a black man accused of a rape. These are all things under file, curiously. The file in the law department of that town which deals with the case he defended has gone missing, just that one, and they suspect it to be perhaps in her research folder somewhere. Yeah.
JENNIFER BYRNE:
Really?
DBC PIERRE:
Very interesting stuff. Did you know she was a next door neighbour to Truman Capote? Yeah, they used to trade little stories together and everything as kids. And I think there's, there's so much, there's... There's a real spring of genuine literary reason.
MARIEKE HARDY:
The Truman Capote thing is interesting because I told a friend that we were gonna be doing this and I said, you know, "We're all gonna sit and agree." He said, "Of course, you're gonna bring up about the rumour that Truman Capote actually wrote it." And I thought, "That's news to me. I've never heard that rumour before."
VAL MCDERMID:
It's clear from his own correspondence that he didn't. I mean, there was a rumour that's going around simply because she's only written the one book and then never written again so everybody goes, "It must have been Truman Capote that wrote it cos just like this dumb woman down in Alabama." But it's clear from Capote's own correspondence and indeed her correspondence with her editor that it wasn't him that wrote it.
MARIEKE HARDY:
But the second album syndrome thing is an interesting one to think about why she didn't write anything again. I mean, Joseph Heller kept going after Catch-22.
JENNIFER BYRNE:
Sadly.
MARIEKE HARDY:
Yes, exactly. Exactly! And I think, what was it someone said to me, when a university lecturer's saying, "You've never written anything as good as Catch-22." And he said, "Yes, but I wrote Catch-22." Which is a great zinger from Joseph Heller. But, I mean, why did she not write again?
VAL MCDERMID:
Some people have only got one book in them.
JASON STEGER:
Yes, I suppose that's true.
DBC PIERRE:
Well, she herself said, "I said what I had to say."
JENNIFER BYRNE:
Drawing so closely on her own life, I mean, you only have one life.
DBC PIERRE:
That sounded to me like a very well-described slice of exactly where she was and the things that happened to her family and it's clear that Atticus and Boo and everyone is her immediate milieu.
JASON STEGER:
Well, she's written the perfect book almost. Why would she wanna tarnish her reputation?
DBC PIERRE:
She's still alive, she's still there in the town.
VAL MCDERMID:
And who knows?
DBC PIERRE:
Her sister is a practicing lawyer still. And very tight-lipped.
JENNIFER BYRNE:
And we ain't gonna get another one.
DBC PIERRE:
No.
VAL MCDERMID:
Yeah, but when she dies, there might be a trunk full of magnificent manuscripts. MARIEKE HARDY: She's like 2Pac.
JENNIFER BYRNE:
I would just say, though, for all who have read it, and probably everyone out there has read it, read it again. Read it again.
MARIEKE HARDY:
I feel like we should all hold hands now.
DBC PIERRE:
Sing songs. Raise, be healed.
VAL MCDERMID:
He's among us!
JENNIFER BYRNE:
That is our club for another month. A big thanks to tonight's book clubbers. Thank you so much to Pierre, to Marieke, to Jason and to Val.