O livro de Harper Lee bateu todos os recordes (EUA)
As vendas de Go Set a Watchman no primeiro dia bateram todos os recordes anteriores na categoria de ficção, incluindo O Símbolo Perdido, de Dan Brown, As Cinquenta Sombras de Grey, de E.L. James, ou Harry Potter e as Relíquias da Morte, de J.K. Rowling — que detinham os recordes anteriores. Os dados são confirmados pelas vendas da Barnes & Noble, Book-A-Million e Amazon.
Entretanto, na Grã-Bretanha, estima-se que as vendas possam ter ultrapassado os 105.000 exemplares no primeiro dia, de acordo com informações do grupo Penguin.
Crítica de Adam Gopnik, publicada na New Yorker.
«The book’s evolution from “Watchman” into “Mockingbird” in less than three years is remarkable. To put it into context, a lot of novels are dreadful, and most are ordinary. Even the 150 or so submitted for the Man Booker prize every year—supposedly the cream of literary publishing—are a mixed bunch. Only a handful, if that, could be considered great. “Go Set a Watchman” is one of the ordinary ones. It has flashes of delight—the 14-page account of a ladies’ coffee morning is particularly hilarious. But many of the characters are one-dimensional and they spout long speeches, chiefly about race, that feel both unfinished and undigested. That Atticus Finch should reveal himself to his adult daughter as a racist bigot, rather than the moral giant of “Mockingbird”, can only have been written by someone who had not had a child or seen at first hand the inexorable nosiness of the young, whether about their parents’ motives or their sex lives.»
«The most surprising thing about “Go Set A Watchman”, then, is how a young writer, so rooted in the customs and mores of her time and seemingly with no sense of drama or history, was able to transform a first novel from a pedestrian piece of prose into a soaring work that has enthralled millions through the decades. It makes one want to salute the human imagination—and weep that she never wrote more.»