The land of sweet forever Stories and essays

Miscellaneous writings from shortly before and afterTo Kill a Mockingbird made the author famous. Taken as a whole, the works add up to pleasant ephemera. The eight previously unpublished short stories mostly plumb the same material as Lee's bestselling novel: small-town life in Alabama, often viewed through the eyes of a child. In "The Water Tank," a sixth grader is terrified that she might be pregnant based on misleading information from her much older, half-educated classmates. "The Binoculars," "The Cat's Meow," and the title story also address with rueful humor Southern ignorance and narrow-mindedness, though the calm, reasonable father in "The Pinking Shears" foreshadows the counterbalance presented by Atticus Finch inMockingbird. "This Is Show Business?," a funny account of a favor turned into a day-long ordeal, and "A Roomful of Kibble," about an eccentric acquaintance, are the only tales set in New York, where Lee lived for many years; "The Viewers and the Viewed," a wry analysis of Manhattan movie audiences' reactions to bogus film titles, is misleadingly grouped under fiction. The essays published in the decade following her novel's success are standard-issue magazine fare: a rambling consideration of "Love--in Other Words"; a recipe for crackling bread with the sardonic aside, "Some historians say by this recipe alone fell the Confederacy"; patriotic musings on "When Children Discover America." The exceptions are a moving piece about the Christmas gift that gave Lee the freedom to write without financial constraints for an entire year and a touching but sharp-eyed tribute to her close friend Truman Capote. A 1983 lecture nostalgically recalls Albert James Pickett's 19th-centuryHistory of Alabama; a 1989 essay written for an American Film Institute program praises Gregory Peck's "inspired performance" as Atticus; and a 2006 letter to Oprah asks, "Can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer?" Agreeable enough, but best for completist library collections and diehard fans. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.