We Need to Talk About Kevin Paperback – December 27, 2011

This is the third fiction book I've read hoping it will answer the question of why teenagers apparently snap and murder their classmates. Jodi Picoult's "19 Minutes" and Cara Hoffman's "So Much Pretty," both fell disappointingly short for me. Perhaps these two books were simply telling stories but I was hoping they would reveal more. The author of "We Need to Talk About Kevin," I believe, does not attempt to answer the question per se but to provide a list of plausible who-is-to-blame options in order of their likelihood: 1) The child was simply born evil, 2) The child is the product of a disfunctional family and especially a cold mother, 3) The media encourages mass murders by providing fame, audience, and competition to future murderers, and 4) Violent video games and the general inability of society to shield a child from bad influence. The reader's own preferences and personal prejudices will lead them to the explanation they find most plausible. I will note that there are a few possible explanations that the author takes off the table in order to narrow the focus and probably enhance the believability of the story: 1) Kevin is not bullied and 2) He does not use a gun for his crime. The fact that he does not use a gun is portrayed as a very systematic choice because Kevin does not want his crime to be over-shadowed by a gun control debate. But I'm getting ahead of myself.Most readers will agree that one of the first 2 options will provide the who-is-to-blame answer in this story, and this is of course the age-old nature vs. nurture debate. Within the first page, I couldn't stand the narrator, Kevin's mother. This almost stopped me from continuing, as the first 100 or so pages are nothing but snotty, pretentious drivel. Eva hates her fellow human beings, looks down on everyone, makes absolutely horrid observations about even her ex-husband who she claims to still love, and uses words that are too big and sentences that are too long. It's so over-the-top that I assumed this was a device. The only other conclusion would be that the author is also a pretentious snob but I do not think this is the case.Just because you don't care for her, you can't discount her observations. As the reader, you have to attempt to sort out the facts from her interpretation of the facts. For example, Kevin didn't talk until he was 3. When he did start speaking, he spoke in full sentences. Regardless of the interpretation as to why (was he a perfectionist? was he devious? was he withholding?) the point is he knew how to do something that he didn't let on to. Kevin forced his mother to change his diapers until he was 6! And yes, his intentions are clear as day to me though perhaps others may interpret it differently. Kevin won't give people what they want. He sneaks in eating so that he is not hungry at mealtime. Everything his mother needs in the way of results, feedback, or even feeling like she's done her motherly job, he denies her.He progresses to being a killjoy. Anything that anyone else delights in, he destroys. Only once does he get caught (prior to the big day), water pistol in hand destroying his mother's beloved maps. Otherwise, bad things just happen to those around him. He is adept at finding peoples' weaknesses and nursing them: turning a pretty girl scarily anorexic, helping a child with severe psoriasis scratch her face bloody, ruining a teacher's career with sexual abuse allegations, and so much more. He is interested in computer viruses because they tear down other people's hard work. There are a couple of sub-thematic diatribes in the book about how there is nothing left in life to create, the only possibility left is to destroy. Most notably, the classmates that he singles out for death are those who irritated him, and how did they irritate him? By having interests. That is it. Folks that are interested in things bother him. Even as a child, he wasn't interested in doing a darn thing. It's like he never outgrew the "no" phase.Even when he's not being blatantly evil, Kevin seems to enjoy making people feel uncomfortable. In complete opposition to the my-pants-are-falling-off-of-me trend, he wears his clothes too tight. I felt embarrassed just reading the descriptions of pants not quite zipping up and shirts stretched too tight across the nipples. I suspect that in addition to thrilling in making teachers and schoolmates uncomfortable, he is also trying to cast doubts about his wealthy family.There is one omission to the list of possible explanations for the massacre and that is mental health. As a possibility, it is neither presented nor eliminated. I believe that the author is presenting Kevin as a sane individual, but what if he did have some form of mental illness? Kevin does confess to depression and asks for a Prozac subscription but you feel that he is only building a plausible excuse of being medicated. The narrator does seem to be building a case that her son was very deliberate and in control of all of his choices and planning, but I'm not sure if that is the same as clinical sanity. Perhaps it is.Eva knows that her son is very much like her. But clearly he is the worse of the 2 devils because she still wants his what? love? approval? cooperation? and he needs nothing from her except maybe an audience and another person to toy with. By her own admissions, in the courtroom she is bored, manipulative, and uncooperative. I don't think she feels victimized and if anything, she just sees this as an inconvenient fall from grace. I wonder if she regrets the deaths of Kevin's classmates. In her letters to her ex-husband, I sense a competition (only on her part as it is a one-way dialogue) that at least she was "on" to Kevin and and least he was "real" with her. This, again, makes her unlikeable to me as her thoughts and emotions are inappropriate and misplaced. Why be in a contest with the ex-husband as to who was the favorite parent of a killer? Where is the regret? What is she doing to try to make amends to society? Does she completely disassociate herself? What human being wouldn't at least feel a little badly about a mass murder even if it wasn't their fault?So as to the nature vs nurture question, here is what I think: it's a terrible child with a terrible mother. He came out of her womb uncooperative, manipulative, and destructive. But his mother possesses at least the first 2 characteristics, so is he the genetically cranked-up version of her?Just when you really can't stand the narrator, the author slightly redeems her but breaks your heart with the introduction of a sister for Kevin. Docile, obedient, "doormat" Celia is the apple of her mother's eye. If the author hadn't introduced a second, sweet, pliant, and appreciative child you may wonder if indeed Kevin is so rotten because his mother is so cold. But Celia helps to endorse the theory that Kevin is just a bad seed. With dread in your stomach, you realize that Kevin will destroy that which gives someone else pleasure, and his sister gives his mother pleasure. He maims her permanently, and the quiet accepting manner of this little girl, well, it just puts me beside myself.Confession: I've been writing this review as I'm reading the book. The author just dropped such a bombshell that I should go back and edit my reactions to Kevin's mother but I will leave them as testimony to the fact that the author does play with your emotions brilliantly. Now I see that she is not un-remorseful, she is shell-shocked. She has been stripped of everything that meant anything to her. The unfolding of this scene, the scene in which she discovers her 2 loved ones dead, stands in stark contrast to her factual reporting on the school massacre and its victims. As the reader, you are crushed by her discovery and it truly unfolds in horrific, dreadful slow motion. Now I see that when it comes to the school massacre, she simply has no emotion left and resents having to answer for any responsibility in a courtroom when she is in the same position as the plaintiffs; she is in a position of complete and utter loss.I also see now that when she appears to be talking down to her husband, she is doing it in a loving, honest, and complete way. I understand and feel the same, you should not glorify the dead, true love means remembering all the flaws too. I imagined her writing condescending but unsent letters to an ex-husband who had custody over their daughter which of course is not true. I could be wrong but I think she may even feel complicit in their murders because Kevin is so clearly her child. Her child, who has saved the worst punishment for her: to be left alive and living in the aftermath of his destruction. Does she visit her son in jail because she feels complicit or because he is all she has left of her former life? Maybe both.I imagine that in writing letters to her husband she herself is trying to understand how this all happened. Just as Kevin confesses at the end that he "doesn't know" anymore why he did it, she doesn't know if she is at fault. She seems to want to think that if she hadn't disliked her son or had been more defensive of him perhaps matters would have turned out differently. I doubt that, given that the father who always defended his son is portrayed as a dupe and ends up dead. She concludes her final letter with this statement: "I am too exhausted and too confused and too lonely to keep fighting, and if only out of desperation or even laziness I love my son. He has five grim years left to serve in an adult penitentiary, and I cannot vouch for what will walk out the other side. But in the meantime, there is a second bedroom in my serviceable apartment. The bedspread is plain. A copy of "Robin Hood" lied on the bookshelf. And the sheets are clean."My aching heart and saddened mind strongly recommend this book as an honest and complicated answer to one of the most difficult questions we currently face. And that answer could very well be "We don't know."

"We Need to Talk About Kevin," by Lionel Shriver, is a nightmare of motherhood made real. It is a contemporary domestic horror story about a Columbine-like school massacre. The book deals with the crime of 15-year-old Kevin Khatchadourian, a boy who--with monstrous premeditation and extreme brutality--murders seven classmates, a cafeteria worker, and an English teacher. We are told these facts early in the story, but the full details are withheld until the end.The book is the tale of Kevin's life told with unrelenting introspection from his mother's point of view. The story unfolds as a long series of letters from the mother, Eva, to her estranged husband, Franklin. The letters start one-and-one-half years after the murders, and end on the two-year anniversary some five months later. Eva's purpose in writing the letters is clear: she is overwrought with guilt and seeks to determine if she may have contributed to her son's crime by not loving him more. She hopes by recounting, in agonizingly raw detail, the story of her 18-year-long relationship with her son, that she will finally be able to uncover the truth--knowing the truth, she may then perhaps be able to come to terms with herself, and somehow get on with her life.We reader wants to know the truth, too! So we grasp the covers of this book with white knuckles and are compelled, with ever-increasing disquieting fear, to read on. We read on despite the fact that we do not like this protagonist, or her miscreant son. We read on like a spectator in a slowly unfolding real-life horror story--we can't turn it off--we have to know all the details. Of course, ultimately, we do...and the ending is a terrific shocker made all the more so because the build up has been so intensely draining.At one point in the novel, the author unintentionally mocks the voyeuristic interest of her readers. Kevin seems to speak directly to us during a TV interview after the crime. "All you people watching out there, you're listening to what I say because I have something you don't: I got plot. Bought and paid for. That's what all you people want, and why you're sucking off me. You want my plot. I know how you feel, too, since hey, I used to feel the same way. TV and video games and movies and computer screens... On April 8th, 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. Nuts, I ought to be on some government payroll."So what about the mother? Is she guilty? That question is never resolved in the book. It is left up to each reader to determine on his own. If you read the reviews, you'll see that the author has achieved some sort of balance between those readers who believe the mother is at fault, and those that believe that Kevin was just born bad.I had a difficult time with this book. There were many times I wanted to just put it down and forget it, but I had promised to review it, so I stuck with it. Given other reviewers' reactions to this book, my own viewpoint is probably not typical. I am the type of person who switches off the TV during long, live, real-life horror news--not because it disturbs me, but rather because I loathe the entertainment circus, preferring my news filtered by reliable print journalists. I am also the type of reader who actively shuns autobiographies (and this is a fictional autobiography) because I am too conscious of the self-delusions that fill their pages with half-truths. Understanding real life takes multiple viewpoints to get us past our own self-delusions. When reading book-length coverage of horrendous true-life crimes, I prefer the journalistic integrity of a nonfiction specialist like Ann Rule. Now there's an author who turns out authentic real crime page-turners! When you finish one of her books, you know you've got the real answers behind the news.I knew from the beginning of this dark tale that I'd never get a clear picture of events if we were only allowed one viewpoint, and that one from an immature, selfish, self-centered woman who obviously lacked a biologically normal degree of empathy. The mother and son were so much alike, what separated them was only the degree of their incapacity for empathy and therefore how much their handicaps hampered their life in general.The epistolary structure of the novel was at times so artificial that it stretched my imagination past its breaking point. It was also far too restraining! Every thought, word, and remembered detail of dialogue by another character had to be filtered through Eva's mind. It put the reader in the prison of Eva's mind for the entire book. With such an unlikable character, I found this a most uncomfortable situation.In an interview with the author in the Toronto "Globe and Mail" (July 7, 2004, p. R3), Shriver shares her thoughts about her own similarity to Eva. "I'm sufficiently close to her in type that it's hard for me to say I like or don't like her. I'm ambivalent about her in the same way that I'm ambivalent about myself. I gave her a lot of qualities that I believe I have in abundance but they are not necessarily likeable, and I don't necessarily find them likeable. I consider myself very selfish. I don't easily give up my time or energy to something that I don't get something out of. So the idea of spending morning after morning with a toddler drives me nuts. It would be killingly dull. And so I have a fun, interesting life. Travel. Write books. And die."Although I can sincerely appreciate why this novel won the Orange Prize, I also had trouble with the author's prose. On the sentence and paragraph level, the writing was truly outstanding, but over the course of 400 pages it became painfully obvious that a good editor might have helped Shriver enormously. This book could have been far better with far less. She has a tendency to overwrite, and that, combined with the unrelenting introspection, guilt, and discordant tenor, made for some very tough slogging. To say the least, this was not a fun book to read.I am pleased that I finished this book. In the end, the book left me with a chilling and disturbing portrait of Eva Khatchadourian, a woman of little empathy trying to raise a son perhaps void of any empathy at all. Over the course of 400 pages, I came to understand and care about this fictional woman. She has my sympathy, despite the fact that if I ever met her I'd go out of my way to avoid any further contact. I've met others like her--these are extremely difficult people. Typically there exists great devastation in and around their personal lives and they seek to draw you into it. I avoid such people, but when I can't, I remember to be as forgiving and understanding as I can while still managing to be on my guard at all times.My take on the title is that the author wants us, the readers, to "Talk about Kevin"--in our heads, as well as with our friends...and in this manner spread interest for the book like a contagion. Given the book's enormous marketing success over the past four years, I'd say this tactic has succeeded beyond the author's wildest dreams.So, I recommend this book, but with significant reservations. If you've never known a woman like Eva, then this is your opportunity to do so without endangering yourself in the process. Also, if you like horror genre fiction with a feminist twist and a lot of excellent literary overtones, then this may be exactly your cup of tea.

Gripping, thought-provoking and also very cold. Is the glass half empty or is it indeed full? An interesting read that really makes you think.

Beautifully but hauntingly written.

Just the cover is different.

This book haunts you. I read it months ago and still think of the protagonistas at least once a day. A must read for eveyone.. l loved it even though it breaks your heart. Brilliant writing.

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