Harper Leefascinates, this much is clear.
Just last year,Mockingbirdwas named the country’s favorite novel ever by a public vote.
Casey Cep’sFurious Hoursfills in the gap of Lee’s post-Mockingbirdcareer with insatiable curiosity and impressive research.
Credit: Knopf
It reveals not just her intellectual interests, but within them, her personal relationships and motivations.
Cep seeks to immerse us in Lee’s obsessions, her inner life.
Furious Hoursopens in a courtroom, mid-1970s, with Lee in attendance for a murder trial.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Strange times, in other words.
And what was Lee doing in that courtroom?
Lee, in Cep’s estimation, can wait.
One such niche was preacher.
(“He always considered himself ‘minister of the gospel,'” Cep writes.)
From there, four more of his family members were found dead within seven years.
But as Cep lays out, he was mostly just a fraud chasing death benefits.
Cep thrives in specifics.
Cep takes readers on that journey from a crisp, detached, eloquent distance.
Cep likely wouldn’t disagree with this assessment, for incompletion isFurious Hours’ signature concern.
Yet the author doesn’t quite meditate on the theme enough to render the structure fully satisfying.
Lee is only reintroduced in the book’s final act, after the slimmest of its three parts.
In that sense, there’s a stirring poetry toFurious Hoursthat eludes most contemporary nonfiction.
Cep’s struggles are Lee’s struggles.
“Furious Hoursuniquely, frustratingly confronts a long-incomplete story by telling an incomplete story of its own.B
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