The Land of Sweet Forever by Harper Lee review – newly discovered stories from an American great

<p>If we regard this book as literature, it is an unqualified failure. But these juvenile stories and essays shed fascinating light on the repression of Lee’s early life</p><p>When a new book is published by a writer dead for a decade,&nbsp;there is always some suspicion that the bottom of the barrel is being scraped. When the writer is&nbsp;Harper Lee, there is also the unpleasant aftertaste of the release of&nbsp;her second novel, 2015’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/go-set-a-watchman-harper-lee-review-novel">Go Set a Watchman</a>, which was promoted as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, when in fact it was a formless early draft. The publication was also surrounded by controversy over whether the aged Lee, by then seriously disabled, had really consented to its publication.</p><p>This new book, The Land of Sweet Forever, is a much more conventional enterprise: a collection of Lee’s unpublished short stories and previously uncollected essays. No&nbsp;deception is being practised here, and&nbsp;if people want to read the lesser scribblings of a favourite author, it is surely a victimless crime. However, like most such books, it has little to offer to those who aren’t diehard fans.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/oct/21/the-land-of-sweet-forever-by-harper-lee-review-newly-discovered-stories-from-an-american-great">Continue reading...</a>