Mockingbird at Fifty

Next week, I am participating in several To Kill a Mockingbird events, including a marathon reading in Salem and a panel discussion at the Boston Public Library about what the novel means to me as a writer. I couldn’t be happier. Early on, reading Harper Lee’s novel became one of my most formative experiences, not only as a reader and writer but as a person. Most people say that they remember where they were when they first read the story. I am no exception. I was ten years old when the book was published. The following summer, my best friend and I read it aloud, by flashlight, in our tree-house. Summering in New Hampshire put us about as far from Macomb, Alabama (or Monroeville, if you prefer) as you can get, but the voice of Scout was universal. If we northern girls argued about any aspect of the book, it was which one of us was Scout. We both picked up her identity in the very first chapter and carried her with us for several years to come. Forget the dividing force of any so-called Mason-Dixon line. We were Scout.

To Kill a Mockingbird cemented my love of reading, but it was a tough act for any book to follow. Yet because of Lee’s book, I kept reading and eventually I started writing as well. Since I have been asked to consider how the story affected me as a writer, I thought I’d jot down a few random thoughts.

As an author, I am often asked where I got the name, Brunonia. That is a long story and unrelated to this post except to say that it is my middle name. My first name is Sandra. Harper Lee’s first name is Nelle. When she became a writer, she dropped her first name and used her middle name: Harper. As imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I used Brunonia.

In my new book, The Map of True Places, I named the father after Atticus Finch. I couldn’t name him Atticus, of course, no reader would have stood for such a thing. I named him Finch. His daughter, my protagonist, is Zee Finch. These two characters couldn’t be more different from Atticus and Scout, and that is the point: Atticus is the perfect father figure, Finch is not. But there are some intentional and subtle similarities between the two men which I leave to my readers to discover. As I was writing the character of Finch, I kept a question taped to my desk: What would Atticus do? In most situations, I would figure it out, and then have Finch do the opposite. In my first book: The Lace Reader, I like to think that the character of Towner had a little of Scout in her, and that her twin sister, Lyndley, had a bit more. Scout is who they both might have been if there hadn’t been so much trouble in their lives.

As a writer, my fondest dream would be to write an important book, one that would change the world the way Harper Lee’s book did. I believe that it is our stories that inform us as a culture, and our stories that sometimes change us. This is a lofty goal, and one I’ve haven’t even begun to approach, but it is strong motivation, a reason to keep writing. With a book that, in some circles, has been named more influential than the Bible, this may be an impossible dream.  That Harper Lee never wrote another book after To Kill A Mockingbird makes perfect sense to me. I probably wouldn’t. Would you?

There are so many ways that this story has influenced me as a writer, but there is one big one that I was not even aware of until this morning when I was working on the characters for my new book.

When I’m creating each character, I do an exercise that, I always believed, came from the actors I knew when I lived in Los Angeles. As I am getting to know my characters, I try to become them: to eat what they eat, to dress as they would dress, to sleep when they would sleep. It was an easy thing to do when I was writing my first two books, since both contemporary stories were set in the city where I live.  I would take to the streets of Salem as they might and try to see how they would react to everything that came their way. One of my characters wanted to steal a boat, one wanted to shoplift. Though I have a brother who is a criminal defense attorney and would have reluctantly defended me, I didn’t take their actions that far (to the great relief to my brother). Still, I found this exercise a really helpful way to get to know my characters. If you have the opportunity and the inclination, I highly recommend it.

Until today, I didn’t realize that this character exercise reveals another parallel to Mockingbird.  In rereading the classic in preparation for next week’s festivities, I came upon one of the most memorable quotes in the book, a bit of advice from Atticus to Scout after a horrible first day of school: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. “

Thank you, Atticus. . . and thank you Harper Lee.

Photo courtesy of Harper Collins.

Brunonia Barry

Brunonia Barry is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The Lace Reader, The Map of True Places, and The Fifth Petal, chosen #1 of Strand Magazine’s Top 25 Books of 2017. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages and has been an Amazon Best of the Month and a People Magazine Pick. Barry was the first American author to win the International Women’s Fiction Festival’s Baccante Award and was a past recipient of Ragdale Artists’ Colony’s Strnad Invitational Fellowship as well as the winner of New England Book Festival’s award for Best Fiction. Her reviews and articles on writing have appeared in The London Times, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post. Brunonia served as chairperson of the Salem Athenaeum’s Writers’ Committee, as Executive Director of the Salem Literary Festival, and as a member of Grub Street’s Development Committee. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts with her husband, Gary Ward, and their dog, Angel.

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