A small sentient vacuum cleaner listens to an elderly man reading aloud to his dying wife from a first edition of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and decides it would like to be called Scout.
It sounds like a saccharine, kitchy, almost dismissible moment, and yet it contains everything the book is going to be. Tenderness. Grief. The story expresses the strange, persistent desire to try to become something more than we are, to find peace and understanding, and to care for those we are near.
