We Need to Talk About Kevin
Ratings127
Average rating4.1
I can't recommend this book enough. It's just so amazing, it remains with you days, months, year after you finish it.
The movie is not so bad either, btw.
What a fantastic depiction of a terrible situation that poses all sorts of questions about the parents' role (or not) in Kevin being Kevin. I loved Eva's stinging wit and observations about American society. Would have given 5 stars if not for the fact I found it really hard going over the first 120 pages or so.
him keeping the eye and that picture of Eva, most intriguing aspects of the whole book to me
‘We need to talk about Kevin' is Lionel Shriver's debut novel. With nearly 500 pages, written in the form of letters to her husband, Eva recalls the upbringing of Kevin, their first-borne; from his birth till his incarceration at the age of 15 for mass murder. Certain books give away a feeling of it being the author's life's work. Like ‘All the light we cannot see' or ‘To kill a mocking bird'. It could be the length, or how it asks all the right questions or how polished the whole thing is. It appears to the reader that the author has put their everything into it. I was surprised to find that, this isn't her only book.
This book isn't for everyone, and I believe there would only be a handful who resonate with it. There is a stencil of societal norms that rudely pervades every individual's thoughts and actions, at some point in late childhood or adolescence demanding us to walk within its bounds. This permanently molds our perspective. Societal norms guiding our actions are commonplace. Guiding our thoughts? Not so much. Thinking that the person next to you is really ugly, or that you really don't want to be with your partner anymore, or wishing you didn't have to take care of your sick mother are not really unfair thoughts. People understand these, even though they are not talked about or acted upon.
Eva wishes her child wasn't born, so she could go gallivanting across the globe. Eva hates her child. She never tells anyone that, of course.
Blessed with the miracle of new life, she chooses to dwell instead on a forgone glass of wine and the veins in her legs
Now if I could get my mother to read this book(which would be unlikely), she would fling this book out the window before the first chapter was over. And since the copy I got from the thrift store didn't have the first few pages, I bet something very similar did happened before. Most people would find Eva's thoughts unsavory. One-shalt-not-think-of such things. It is a thought crime. For the reader the usual frame of reference is lost. An average person cannot relate with Eva. Perspective is to be skewed to an uncomfortable degree to watch Eva's story through her eyes. Eva's narrative appears to be honest, primarily because she doesn't make the whole thing a white washing scheme for herself; she admits to being wrong at times, but whether it was just those times or were there more, we would never know.
As you would have presumed by now, this is not a happy book. Moments of happiness in this book are as sparse as stars in the night sky. The whole thing is dark. And when everything is going wrong, of course there should be someone to blame. In a book in which the ending is given away in its blurb itself, the captivating element is this mental exercise for the observer to figure out why this happened and who to blame. You get to play seesaw with the nature vs. nurture debate.
Throughout the novel one's opinion about each character would change. They certainly are not one dimensional, though Kevin appears to have no dimension at all. Kevin has no attachment to anything, person or object. He has no passion for anything. He has been in equilibrium since birth. A person's inclination(as well as circumstance) is what cuts a path for their life. Kevin who was inclined towards nothing; loved nothing, hated nothing, ends up killing people. The disinclination/whatever attitude, leads to evil in its purest form. Why did it slide in that direction? There should have been an equal probability of good in its purest form. The idea that goodness is always an uphill climb and evil is the stable low energy state is frightening, yet it could actually be the truth.
The book questions every aspect of parenting without pulling any punches.
”..if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation: the displacement amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your children's answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring”
Oh, I had all the answers when I started reading it, only by the end there were none. By the end I was going over chapters I had already read, when I couldn't believe what I was reading. Every minute I had to rearrange my mind to believe that this was only fiction, because over 400 pages of buildup to this tipping point, is insanely good writing - horrifying yet surprisingly immersive and original.
If you own an open mind, patience, a taste for good writing and at least had a passing interest in psychology, this would be just right for you.
Well written and well structured, but so hateful. The beginning to middle is a challenging read because the writing is so dense and detailed and Eva, the narrator of the story, is hard to like, although occasionally she is easy to understand.
Eva is a neurotic Manhattanite, critical of others with no self awareness of how she resembles the things she hates (hypocritical), and self involved. She doesn't like kids but decides having a baby is the right next step in her emotional connection to her husband Franklin. When she has her son Kevin, she's disappointed that she doesn't like him and feels she was entitled to a more lovable baby.
One recurring theme of the book is a hatred of America and how spoiled we are, and criticism of of culture that creates and sensationalizes mass-murdering teens but also of the various solutions from the schools, including treating every stray word, every poem, every form of self-expression that seems dark as a “sign” and expelling the kids (not to mention, as Kevin points out, giving them ideas). Interesting to me it's not a gun that Kevin uses, so this isn't an anti-gun message. That would be too easy I suppose. There's also the idea that modern people don't DO anything, just sit back and watch the few people who do really terrible things. Mass murderer teen uses this to give his life meaning.
“On April 8, 1999, I jumped into the screen, I switched to watchee. Ever since, I've known what my life is about. I give good story. It may have been kinda gory, but admit it, you all loved it. You ate it up.”
There's also a hatred of women/motherhood. Eva writes about herself (the book is done as a series of letters) as someone who resented everything she had to give up to have a baby: her body, her career as a travel writer, her close relationship to her husband.
I don't think we blame her for what Kevin did in the sense of disliking her child or being a bad mother. I did have questions, however.. Never does she take the kid to the pediatrician or suggest a child therapist even when she observes things he does that would hint at serious problems. The resistance to potty training, lack of curiosity or interest in playing when Kevin was a toddler would be enough. Kevin never lets her see him eat, never wants her to know he's learning anything. He denies her any pleasure of parenting and by Eva's description, seems smart enough to be aware of this even pre-K. Her husband, on the other hand, sees a perfect healthy happy little boy and Eva suggests Kevin manipulates his father to keep believing this way by putting on a “Gee Dad, this is great!” attitude in his presence.
Is Eva so under the thumb of her husband? It doesn't seem to be the case, she doesn't seem that submissive, Franklin doesn't seem that domineering. He sees Kevin as a concept of a son but Eva sees his unique personality. Yes, she does nothing about it.
Another interesting theme is that of people who “don't know what life is for.” Eva sees this in her husband's parents who collect material goods but don't seem to appreciate music, art, real living. They just spend their money and fill their time. This connects to the hatred of American consumerism and culture as well. Kevin enjoys nothing, doesn't want anyone else to enjoy anything, and when he goes on his killing spree, targets other students who display a passion for something.
This is also part of Kevin's relationship with Eva. There is power in not approving of or liking anything, holding yourself aloof and being the one everyone wants to impress or please. It goes both ways between them, and Kevin admits that Eva was his “audience” for the things he did, since she was the one person who could see him clearly.
This one was an intense experience, intellectually and emotionally. It got better about half way through, once Eva became less obsessed with herself.
I have a million thoughts about this book, and I recommend it highly to anyone thinking about the complexities of motherhood, or just the challenges of being a human person who can't help but project your thoughts, feelings, and experiences onto those around you. This is an uncomfortable and fascinating book, with characters who are simultaneously intensely dislikable and (sometimes) terrifyingly relateable.
The narrator, Eva, is obviously presenting us with an unreliable version of events, but as we have no other version to go on we are forced to read between the lines, judging her understandings of what happened through the lens of the behaviours she presents to us and the way she speaks. This traps you in a spiral of questioning and doubt.
The rest of my review contains spoilers/ Eva is both defensive and self-recriminating, stewing in guilt but also painting a picture of a miserable life in which her husband was (intentionally or unintentionally) gaslighting her, and in which she and her son hated each other. The book's main question is whether her son is deeply evil, or whether her intense mistrust of him from infancy pushed his character in a certain direction. It is a unique take on the nature vs. nurture question, and inevitably the answer is somewhere in between. At the same time, Kevin so often seems like a reflection of the worst parts of Eva's personality, or, she acts like him. She often acts just like him. Did he learn these behaviors from her? Did she learn them from him? If she approached her son with a different attitude could they have bonded over their acidic judgment of the world, their tendency towards selfishness, their feelings of detachment? And yet, at the same time as you ask yourself those questions, you remember what he did and his lack of remorse and the gulf opens up between them again. The end of the book delivers two more devastating blows: the first which I won't even write here in case anyone did not heed my spoiler warning (yes, you can sort of guess it while reading, but I did not want to try to guess, so I did not). That first revelation makes Eva's alone-ness even more acute, for even the righteous indignation we feel on her behalf through much of the book can have no answer. The second twist is Kevin's turn towards softness and remorse. This moment, their hug at the end of the book, leaves your head spinning. How can we reconfigure our understanding of Kevin to include the capacity for remorse, for goodness, for uncertainty?
A content warning: there are a few moments where Eva, the protagonist/narrator, expresses some borderline racist/stereotypical views of other groups...these are presented clearly as the narrator's views not the author's, and serve to characterize Eva further as self-centered and flawed in a particular way. I know that Lionel Shriver has also been considered a controversial figure. These views are not throughout the book but do come up maybe two or three times.
And a final warning: if you, like me, are a teacher, probably don't read this book in the lunchroom at school because someone will inevitably ask you what you are reading and then you will have to have a fairly uncomfortable conversation...
What a book, what a book. The prose is amazing. To think that somebody can sit down and write like that! Every perfectly articulated thought about the anxiety of motherhood. A lot of Eva's thoughts were very relatable to me. That fear about the loss of identity (you just become Mother), the changing of your body so-much-so that not even that is yours anymore, taking the next step because you should just... do that? But why? To try and find purpose in your life but instead of taking responsibility for it, foist it onto the next person? Existence is a lot to ask of someone!
My heavy handed analysis is that the father (who infuriated me to no end - but it's probably very hard to admit there's something wrong with your child, especially if your partner is so openly repulsed by them) is the American Dream, deluded by the image of family, and Eva, coming from a background where genocide is just part of family history, sees the reality of it. I don't think Shriver writers that neatly, though. She also paints Eva as a hoity-toity better-than-you Liberal, so we could take the stance that her cynicism and superior attitude led her to being a bad mother, and therefore resulted in Kevin's psychopathy. I don't think I lean firmly on either side.
Two moments I found really interesting were when Kevin was sick, and so totally vulnerable that he behaved like a 'normal' child, and when Eva starts to reveal her deeper thoughts about Celia not really amounting to much. I feel like both of those oppositional scenes were placed for us to question the Kevin vs. Eva question. Deep down Kevin wanted to be loved, and deep down Eva was incapable of selfless loving because she was too cynical.
Very interesting read with lots to think about.
an INSTANT new favourite! I watched the movie a couple years ago so I knew everything that was going to happen (and the movie got every detail right.. one of the best adaptions imo) but that didn't affect my experience with the book!
I finished it and started dancing around my kitchen because I was so excited because I havent felt this way about a book in a while. AH im in love!
I had such mixed feelings about this novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin.
For much of this read, I harbored feelings of great disdain. If I were not reading this for book club, I likely would've not finished. Though I pushed forward, I knew this book could do no better than two stars. Why?
Mostly because of the style of writing. Reading was terribly painful. The novel is set up as a series of letters from Eva to her estranged husband, Franklin. There are so many problems with these letters, and therein lies 90% of the problem with this story. For starters, the letters are overwrought. Eva is the founder of a very successful series of travel guides. She's writing to her husband. And from the first sentence, we get this:
I'm unsure why one trifling incident this afternoon has moved me to write to you. But since we've been separated, I may most miss coming home to deliver the narrative curiosities of my day, the way a cat might lay mice at your feet: the small, humble offerings that couples proffer after foraging in separate backyards. Were you still installed in my kitchen, slathering crunchy peanut butter on Branola though it was almost time for dinner, I'd no sooner have put down the bags, one leaking a clear viscous drool, than this little story would come tumbling out, even before I chided that we're having pasta tonight so would you please not eat that whole sandwich.
This review can also be found on my blog.Well, this was dark as hell. I think I had a general idea of what We Need to Talk About Kevin was about before going into it, but I had no idea the extent to which it would go. It's formatted interestingly: a woman's letters to her ex-husband exploring their past together, primarily her relationship with their son. Unfortunately this format didn't work especially well with the writing style – it's simply not believable to think someone would write letters like this – but ultimately did work extremely well in conveying what it was trying to convey.I knew this about myself in advance, too: that I was just the sort of woman who had the capacity, however ghastly, to rue even so unretractable a matter as another person.There was a lot to say about gender roles and expectations surrounding women, particularly the pressures to have children and how the experience is built up to be so much. There's also some decent commentary on how women can be treated less like people and more like property once they become pregnant. The main character is clearly following the script she feels she should, rather than building the life she wants to. There's also plenty of commentary on nature vs nurture that I won't even begin to get into.A boy is a dangerous animal.If unlikeable characters are not your deal, you will not like this book. Eva herself is absolutely insufferable: she's condescending and rude, and even though you root for her to a certain extent and see what she's seeing, it's easy to see her husband's perspective as well. On the flip side, Franklin is a terrible husband. My internal monologue was saying “girl, dump him” the whole time I read this. He's sexist, controlling, and completely stops seeing his wife as her own person. Please, do not even get me started on Kevin. It's clear from the outset that he's not a character we will like.“You know, it is different when it's yours. You can't go home.” Indeed, my yearning to go home had grown recurrent, but was most intense when I was already there.My biggest issue with this was that the first quarter or so felt dry as hell. While I understand why the slow buildup, I just kept waiting for something to happen. Once the ball gets rolling, though, this is pretty packed with underlying tension and had me waiting on the edge of my seat for what I knew was coming. There were a few moments where I actually brought my hand to my mouth in horror: not because Eva explicitly announced some terrible event, but because she hinted to it so subtly and clearly that it hit even harder. The subsequent descriptions weren't nearly as impactful as the quiet reveals themselves.Kevin was a shell game in which all three cups were empty.I haven't seen the movie so I can't make a comparison, but this is one heavy and gripping piece of literature. I assume there's no way the subtleties and introspective details of this novel could be translated to film, so I'm expecting a more surface-level story once I do watch the adaptation. Regardless, I definitely recommend this to those who feel they can work through the more dense literary fiction to get to the thriller within.Blog Twitter Instagram Facebook
When I started reading this book, I appreciated the prose: it's been a long time since I've had to reach for the dictionary so much; but by the time I hit my first stopping point at 20ish percent, I was over it—it's pretentious and I found it unbelievable that anyone actually speaks like this. And who includes this much detail when recounting things to someone who was there?
I've long been interested in abnormal psych, and I've long wondered about what's experienced by the parent of a mass murderer. From that perspective, the story is fascinating. But it's also infuriating! It's not like Kevin just snapped one fine day. There were signs his entire life that had been excused, overlooked, or ignored. Argh! But there isn't a single likeable character, which makes getting through it tedious. Except for the murdered teacher. She was pretty great. There's something particularly grating about Eva, especially in the beginning. It felt like a male voice speaking through her—odd, since the author is a woman.
I really wanted to like this. But it just thinks it's so much more than it is. It didn't help that I wanted to throttle the entire Khatchadourian family.
Visceral. That was the word I landed on (thanks to Joan's help) that best sums up the feeling I got from reading this book. That might sound off-putting, when the crux of the book involves the child of the narrator perpetrating a school shooting. There's little gore, in terms of physical violence. It's emotional violence, almost, though its awfulness (in the sense of “awe-inspiring terror”) is in the very rawness with which the narrator, Eva, relates the internal landscape of her entire adult life, not any specific actions.
The depths to which Eva plumbs her life, her relationship with her husband, her worries about her children, her mounting fear of her sociopathic son and everything in between are scary because of their groundedness. She's not an entirely reliable narrator, due to her relating relationships between multiple people who don't get the chance to have their say, but you never get the impression she's unfair, either.
This is definitely the kind of book you don't want to see yourself in, but in many of the characters I saw not facets of my character (the easy, “Oh he likes Doctor Who and I like Doctor Who!”) but fundamental precepts through which I navigate the world.
When Eva accuses her husband, Robert, of viewing things in terms of the generic (“I'm so proud of my son”) versus the specific (“Kevin did X that I'm proud of”), it was a gut-punch because it reminded me of how I made my way through college, singling out the broad assumptive touchstones (“We're fraternity brothers who are drinking at a party!”) rather than the actual experience (“I'm drinking way too much because I'm interminably bored on a Friday night because I spend too much time not actually doing anything!”). The parallels I could draw between parts of many of the characters really made the book feel like it was taking cheap shots, and this is not a book that really needs to punch above its weight. It's already a prize fighter.
In fact, the only reason I almost didn't give it 5 stars is because I can't read it again. It was just too much to deal with, though I implore those of you who are able to stomach it to tough it out. In the end, though, I can't really fault a book for connecting too much, or for working too well. I'll have to leave it in the words of a Penn State sophomore, talking about the freshman dorms: It's the best worst thing I never want to do again.
This book was gripping from the first page. The style can be a bit difficult to wade through at times because the author's vocabulary seems to be pulled from a SAT vocab. word list but this adds to the character of Eva (Kevin's mother who narrates the story through letters to her husband). I'll admit that I saw the plot twist coming early on in the book but it didn't ruin the book for me at all, in fact going into the chapter I knew would bring the dreaded twist I still kept hoping I was wrong and was horrified at being right. The only reason I give this book 4 stars instead of 5 is that I felt so disturbed by the book by the final pages that I couldn't bring myself to give it a 5 although the fact that I felt so strongly just proves authors powerful writing.
All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone who doesn't mind reading a book that isn't a happy story and deals with some disturbing subject matter. It isn't for everyone but for those who can appreciate the talent it takes to write such a gripping story despite it's dark subject it's the type of book that's not easy to put down that is until you get to the final words and are only all to happy to be done.
Given the subject matter, it seems wrong to say that I enjoyed this book so I will settle for saying I found it engrossing. It is a harrowing tale, told through letters, of a mother's worst nightmare. At times, reading this was like having a bucket of cold water thrown over me, such were the chills it gave me. The final chapters reduced me to tears. A hard-hitting, very moving book.
I have to say that at the beginning of the book I did not think I would even finish the book. I made a concerted effort to plow through the first 100 or so pages. Once I caught on to the style and accepted it as an essential part of the book I began to enjoy it for the literary aspect as well as for the story it was trying to portray. This is a story about love, the lack thereof and about our deepest feelings and emotions. I don't know if I would ever read another Shriver novel (not my style) but I am certainly glad I read this one.
I can't possibly give this book a rating. How do you rate a book that made you literally feel nauseous as you approach the horrible climax? Do you give it one star for being so disturbing and bleak, or do you give it five stars for being beautifully written and unafraid to lay bare some ugly truths about love, parenting and life in general? To quote a line from Woody Allen's “Annie Hall” (completely out of context), reading this book is really a Kafka-esque experience.
A thoroughly excellent book. But “scary” in a way I've never experienced before. Scarily believable maybe? Harrowing for sure. I found myself debating whether this could have been a true story... In our society, perhaps. Yet at times it felt like it went too far, but not to it's detriment, it makes you think. To confront the rarely considered “bad” side of parenting, and of marriage. It considers the “what if's”. How would anyone react with the same child, how would you feel being the husband or the wife in that marriage? I'm not married, and I'm not a parent, but this book still made sense to me, it made me think. I'm no pro at writing reviews and this is more of a stream of consciousness than a carefully thought out review, but this book was heart breaking and I thoroughly recommend it.
I've read a few of the negative reviews regarding this book, and I guess each is entitled to their own opinion. But, have you ever read a book like this? With this writing style? Again it might be a taste thing, but I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style, a real change from books I usually read. I enjoy being made to FEEL when I read books, and the author really accomplishes this... You cant help but detest Kevin, feel sympathy, irritation, anger (among many other emotions) for Eva, and a whole host of other thoughts feelings and emotions throughout. That, to me, is the sign of a talented writer.
I found this book kind of hard to get into but once I was in, I was completely hooked. The first few times I picked it up, I had to get into the right frame of mind to read it because it is written with sort of a strange style. Once you get past that, though, it's quite an intriguing peak into the life of a family torn apart by violence. Recommended.
I had a visceral reaction to this book. I finished the last page about ten minutes ago, and I'm seated in our 80 degree sun porch, and I have the chills. I am actually cold and quivering at the skin level.