We Need to Talk about Kevin (Serpent's Tail Classics)

by Lionel Shriver

WINNER OF THE ORANGE PRIZE read more Interactive online message board now live - visit here Reading group questions here (but don?t spoil the plot!) Read an extract --------------------- Two years ago, Eva Khatchadourian?s son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker, and a popular algebra teacher. Because he was only fifteen at the time of the killings, he received a lenient sentence and is now in a prison for young offenders in upstate New York. Telling the story of Kevin's upbringing, Eva addresses herself to her estranged husband through a series of letters. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about both motherhood in general and Kevin in particular. How much is her fault? Lionel Shriver tells a compelling, absorbing, and resonant story while framing these horrifying tableaux of teenage carnage as metaphors for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.

• ISBN10: 006112429X
• ISBN13: 9780061124297
• Publish Date: 3 July 2006 (first published 25 March 2003)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 432
• Language: English

Reviews

[Amber]

This was the most eerie freakin’ book, you guys. As soon as I finished it I had to sit down and go over what I had just read. The entire thing gave me chills. I’m pretty sure it gave me weird dreams.


So here’s the thing, Kevin is a creepy af child. Like, you read about him and you immediately want to salt the windows and doors, and burn some sage. But, actually, this is all told from his mother’s point of view. Eva seems to suffer with postnatal depression (I think, but please correct me if I’m wrong), which is part of the reason why she’s an unreliable narrator. The other reason is that you have to wonder if her view of her child has been skewed by the horrible act that he committed later in life. I imagine that if your child were to kill a bunch of people, you’d start to think differently of them, right? Her memories could well have been tainted.

And that’s what makes this book so great. Eva is one of the BEST unreliable narrators I’ve read about because the more you read, the more you question things, and then once the book is over you start to go over things more and more. It allows for a good analysis.

I’ve seen a few complaints about Shriver’s use of language, but to be honest it didn’t bother me at all. Eva, the narrator, uses some big words, yes. You could argue that this is largely unnecessary. Personally, I liked the colourful language, partly because it was well written, and partly because it fit with Eva’s character, as she used to be a travel writer.

I am so excited to watch the movie, because the book was truly fantastic and I’m excited to see how it plays out on screen. I’m going to have to find the right moment, though, because this is one of those stories that you have to be in the mood for.

Definitely give We Need to Talk About Kevin a go if you like dark stories, unreliable narrators, and are fascinated by the psychology behind mass murderers. Does that make me sound a little weird? Probably.

[gmcgregor]

In We Need To Talk About Kevin, main character Eva Khatchourian isn't a very good mother. She would (and does) admit that freely. She never had a burning need or desire to be a mother; she was mostly content with her marriage to Franklin Plaskett, their life in New York City, and her position as founder and CEO of A Wing And A Prayer, a series of backpack travel guides. But all her friends were having kids, and Franklin really wanted one, and she'd been feeling like her life needed a bit extra spark for a while, so she agrees to have a child. It's rough from the start: she chafes at the restrictions foisted upon her as a pregnant woman, she has a long and difficult labor, and when Kevin is finally born, he refuses to nurse or even drink her breast milk from a bottle. She suffers from post-natal depression, and when Kevin proves to be difficult at best throughout his entire childhood, she fails to bond with him. Not only that, but as he grows up, she comes to see malice behind nearly all of his actions and regard him with suspicion and fear. Just before his sixteenth birthday, he kills a teacher and several classmates at school. So she was right about him all along...wasn't she?

Eva, whose story is told by Shriver as a series of letters from her to Franklin a year or two after Kevin's school rampage, is a classic unreliable narrator. While she's unafraid of presenting herself in a negative light or admitting fault, she's also our only source of information about Kevin. The incidents she relates about his conduct are often unsettling and worrisome...but they're hand-selected, by a woman who has had all her worst thoughts about her offspring confirmed by what he did. But while there were plenty of people Kevin alienated throughout his life besides his mother (a succession of childhood nannies, kids in his play groups, school classmates), Kevin did have people in his corner, most significantly his father, as well as a high school teacher who ended up among his victims.

The question the novel raises and never answers (but gives you lots of food for thought in both directions along the way) is the age old one: nature or nurture? Kevin was difficult from the moment he was born, but if he'd been able to bond with his mother, would he have been just plain difficult, instead of a murderer? Eva herself is prickly and sometimes, even often, unlikeable. Maybe he just takes after his mother that way. How much does Kevin's pushing back against her result from her aloofness and reserve from him? On the other hand, if he is truly evil, like she sees him and his own murders tend to indicate, what could she have done to change that? Eva and Franklin cared, were present, took an active interest in him and his life. There are a lot of kids who don't even have that. I found myself changing opinions as I read, sympathizing with Eva, then Kevin, back and forth. Shriver doesn't let either of them off the hook, nor should she. There's plenty of culpability to go around. This sucked me in and haunted me after it was done. I'm sure I'll continue to think about it in the future. It's disturbing subject matter, but it's phenomenally well-written and I highly recommend it.

[clq]

I recently saw the film of this book, and I loved it. The story follows Eva, a mother who has ended up in a terrible situation. The film had me feeling desperately sorry for Eva throughout, so this is pretty much what I expected from the book. The book turned out to be more complicated, and rather than seeming to explicitly control the feelings of the reader, the reader is more open to feel what they like. More than a few times this had me wondering if I was supposed to be thinking what I thought, and whether my emotions were 'correct'. The story is told through the letters Eva writes to her husband, and she isn't looking for pity, nor making excuses. We follow Eva's train of thought as she tries to de-construct the terrible thing that has happened. Yes, I did feel very sorry for Eva, but I also found myself wondering along with her whether she actually could have done anything differently. Whether, or to what extent, she is to blame. Without asking questions directly, the book planted plenty. To what extent can parents affect who a child ends up being? How responsible is one for the actions of ones children? This is a good story, and it is told very cleverly. It was different from what I expected having watched the film, but not in a bad way.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Never in my life have I read something like Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin. I knew it would be dark and chilling, but I wasn’t expecting what I read. The book tells the story of Eva, who is writing a series of letters to her husband trying to recounting and trying to understand what happened to cause their son, Kevin into a sociopath. It’s no secret that Kevin killed nine of his classmates in a Columbine style attack (you find this out in the first 10 pages) but there is so much more to the story to keep you reading.



From the very start, you are going to hate Kevin – you’ll probably even hate Eva – their relationship is far from perfect and it is possible that this may scare you from wanting to have kids (definitely having kids like Kevin). There was nothing really wrong with Kevin’s childhood, he was given everything he could ever need; he was just stuck in suburban hell. The underlining theme of this book for me is the whole nature versus nurture debate. It could have been Eva’s ambivalence to Kevin and motherhood that affected him, or something else. I’m sure there is arguments about what caused Kevin to be the way he was; was he born with it, was it his parents, his home life, or something completely different.



For someone that never had kids, Lionel Shriver wrote rather well about motherhood and all the fears and worries that might come with the job. We Need to Talk about Kevin is very dark, so I don’t recommend it to everyone, but having said that, it is well worth the read if you think you can handle it. Apparently there is a movie adaptation of this coming soon, I don’t know how well that would work, I’m sure it will lose a lot of the feelings you get from the book.

[ibeforem]

I really wasn’t expecting much when I picked up this book for $4 at the book fair. Man, was I wrong. This book was extremely captivating. At first, I was concerned that the narrator’s language was way too flowery and extravagant, but once you got to know her a little, you realized that it fit, exactly. And despite these letters being written after Thursday, information is handed out in tantalizing little nuggets, and you don’t know the full story until nearly the very end. I’m still internally debating the believability of the child’s behavior, but nothing should surprise me when it comes to people.

I would recommend this book to anyone... the publisher’s description doesn’t do it credit.