Harper Lee's alleged lost companion novel to To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman, drops July 14, but if you're looking for a review of it, you'll need to look beyond this fiefdom: The Mercury's arts section will not be covering Lee's "new" book. And though To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books ever, I will not be reading Watchman. This is why:

1. In case you don't read the internet, this book is mired in all manner of sketchy circumstances. The story that Lee's lawyer, Tonja Carter, has provided is as follows: Last summer, Carter found Lee's second manuscript in a hidden place where the original manuscript of Mockingbird was kept. Carter told Lee about the new mystery book. Lee, long a reclusive person uncomfortable with fame, was evidently stoked to publish it. Here are a mere handful of some of the holes this story is riddled with:

—According to the NY Times, the manuscript may actually have been discovered in 2011, when rare books expert for Sotheby's Justin Caldwell met with Carter and Lee's agent at the time, to "appraise a Mockingbird manuscript for insurance and other purposes" and discovered a manuscript of a book fitting Watchman's Description in a safe-deposit box with a proof of Mockingbird. "The discrepancy between the two accounts raises questions about whether the book was lost and accidentally recovered, and about why Ms. Lee would not have sought to publish it earlier," continues the Times piece. Carter confirmed being at this meeting, but stated that she went out to run an errand, so didn't see the book.

—When the news broke that Harper Lee was publishing a "new" book, her editor, Hugh van Dusen, purported not knowing until the day after the announcement. In an interview at Vulture, he punted a question about Lee's participation in the project by parroting his company's own press release.

—In Michelle Dean's coverage of Marja Mills' The Mockingbird Next Door, this detail comes up, in a quote from Lee's sister, her longtime advocate Alice Lee. It comes in response to Harper Lee signing a statement drafted by Tonja Carter decrying Mills' project, which the Lees had previously supported:

Imagine my shock when I began to read and get clear about the statement sent from BBL & Carter's office. I had made no statement and could not [see] how that would get started. When I questioned Tonja I learned that without my knowledge she had typed out the statement, carried it to The Meadows and had Nelle Harper sign it. She brought it back to the office and emailed it to Mary Murphy and Hugh Van Dusen. Poor Nelle Harper can't see and can't hear and will sign anything put before her by any one in whom she has confidence. Now she has no memory of the incident.

—Finally, the state of Alabama opened an elder abuse investigation w/r/t Harper Lee's actual participation in publishing this "new" book. Investigators found no documented abuse, which is literally the only good news I've been able to find on this case.

So. Is it possible that Carter just happened to step out of that meeting when Caldwell discovered the book? Could it be that Harper Lee really is completely on-board with the publication of an early draft of her masterpiece? Certainly. Those things could be true. But it could also be that they aren't, and if that's the case, Tonja Carter's steez is just a little too Sam Lutfi-adjacent to make drawing any more attention towards this book seem worthwhile. It looks—to me—like it may very well be a project in bad faith.

2. Setting aside this book's awfully sketchy provenance, there's this: It's not actually a sequel to Mockingbird, but a first draft of that same book. From the NY Times:

The differences in the accounts of when and how the manuscript was discovered could add a wrinkle to the highly anticipated release of “Watchman.” News of the publication delighted fans eager to read another novel by Ms. Lee. But it also represented an abrupt turnaround for an author who had said she did not intend to publish another work and then, late in life, agreed to venture out with a book that had initially been dismissed as an ambitious but disjointed first draft.

Have you ever read a first draft of a novel by one of your favorite authors? There's a reason for that! I'm generally in favor of bringing lost cultural relics to light, but first drafts? They go into a drawer not because they're forgotten treasures but because THAT IS TYPICALLY WHERE THEY BELONG. I learned this the hard way, by reading the "restored" edition of Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast (don't do this). The special edition was loaded with Hemingway's first and second drafts of the stories in Feast. Reading them was like reading someone's diary they didn't want published. As I read, I felt like I was violating old Papa's privacy. If you wanted to know how depressed Hemingway was, then I suppose they served some kind of purpose. But they didn't add anything to the narrative they were tacked onto. There was no fresh insight there. To crib a phrase from Hemingway's buddy Gertrude Stein, there was no there there.

If I were a betting lady, I'd bet that we find much the same absent center here.