Harper Lee says claim that new memoir has her blessing is 'a falsehood'

Marja Mills's The Mockingbird Next Door, just published in the US, draws author's fire for claim it was written with her blessing

• Alison Flood - theguardian.com, Tuesday 15 July 2014 

'As long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood' … Harper Lee in 2007. Photograph: Rob Carr/AP

According to its publisher, Marja Mills's new book about Harper Lee is a chronicle of her friendship with the reclusive author of To Kill a Mockingbird and her older sister, telling of coffees shared at McDonalds and trips to the laundromat in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, catfish suppers and feeding the ducks. But Lee, in a strongly-worded letter she released on Monday, says she would "leav[e] town whenever [Mills] headed this way", and "as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood".
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