To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (5 stars)

In one of the best starts to a book that I can remember, this classic Pulitzer Prize winner begins with a quote:

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once
--Charles Lamb

Writing this review feels a little too much like a high school English assignment so I'm going to keep it (somewhat) brief.  It's an incredible book, and every bit deserves its Pulitzer and place on many Top 100 lists.

Once you've suspended your disbelief that your 8-yr old tom-boy narrator, Scout, is a natural wordsmith with an uncanny talent for deconstructing the messy, complex adult world into powerful and moving observations you'll love it.

Scout's father Atticus is a beacon of progressive thought and moral standing in deeply racist 1930s Alabama.  This from Miss Maudie:

"What I meant was, if Atticus Finch drank until he was drunk he wouldn't be as hard as some men are at their best. Thre 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, and you can look down the street and see the results."

And I completely agree with his philosophy on answering kids' questions, here he reproaches his brother after he evades Scout's question about the meaning of "whore-lady":

"Jack! When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em."

This quote also shows his intense desire to be the best he can, when faced with a moral crisis right at the end of the book:

Sometimes I think I'm a total failure as a parent, but I'm all they've got.  Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him...if I connived at something like this, frankly, I couldn't meet his eye, and the day I can't do that I know I've lost him.  I don't want to lose him and Scout, because they're all I've got.

Some spoilers coming.  If you didn't read it in high school, you should go read it now.

There are some incredibly powerful scenes in the book, particularly Atticus camping outside the jail to protect his client.  Scout defuses an angry mob with a big dose of childish naivete that humanises and personalises Atticus, changing him from the man defending the subject of the mob's hatred, to a father and neighbour.

After the dramatic events of the trial, the denouement seems a little weird.  Basically you know there's something bad still coming, and we just have to sort of wait around for it to show up.  Once it does show up it's shocking, and Scout's simple "Hey, Boo", after the dramatic events is incredibly raw and emotional.

Boo was our neighbor.  He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives.

 5 stars.