Unexpectedly, Boo reciprocates their interest with a series of small gifts, until he ultimately steps off his porch and into their lives when they need him most. Scout, Jem, and their next-door neighbor Dill engage in pranks, trying to make Boo show himself. The first plot revolves around Arthur "Boo" Radley, who lives in a shuttered house down the street from the Finches and is rumored to be some kind of monster. The book's two plots inch forward along parallel tracks, only converging near the end. This echoes the way the whole book unfolds-in no special hurry, with lifelike indirection. The novel opens with the adult Jean Louise "Scout" Finch writing, "When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow." By the time Jem finally gets around to breaking his arm more than 250 pages later most readers will have forgotten they were ever warned. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird begins at the end. Few novels so appealingly evoke the daily world of childhood in a way that seems convincing whether you are 16 or 66. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is the rare American novel that can be discovered with excitement in adolescence and reread into adulthood without fear of disappointment.
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