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We Need to Talk about Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

3.99 · rating details · 15,047 ratings · 3,199 reviews

That neither nature nor nurture bears exclusive responsibility for a child's character is self-evident. But generalizations about genes are likely to provide cold comfort if it's your own child who just opened fire on his feellow algebra students and

416 pages

Published May 1st 2011 by Counterpoint LLC (first published January 1st 2003)

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Jun 21, 2009

Jennifer (aka EM) rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: parents and those who blame them

Recommended to Jennifer (aka EM) by: Veekee

Shelves: moms

This book is just devastating ... and devastatingly good. I've just finished it, and had a little cry on the balcony in the bright sunshine, thinking about my mom and motherhood and blame, self-recrimination, guilt and remorse and parental love and the painfully ambiguous, sometimes tortured complexity of it all.

And that is underselling it.

Suffice for now to say, you might not enjoy this if:

- You believe that a lack of maternal instinct or feeling is a charac...more

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Oct 21, 2007

Courtney Stanton rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: women contemplating having children

The pull-quote on the cover of the edition I read suggests that it's impossible to put this book down. That's almost entirely false. Out of the book's 400 pages, the first 300 were kind of like pulling teeth. Creepy, maternal teeth. The last 100 pages, however, were actually and physically impossible to look away from, and the brisk pace of the climax, after so. many. pages. of buildup, actually created a really wonderful, complete story that was very satisfying and which (god help me) made ...moreThe pull-quote on the cover of the edition I read suggests that it's impossible to put this book down. That's almost entirely false. Out of the book's 400 pages, the first 300 were kind of like pulling teeth. Creepy, maternal teeth. The last 100 pages, however, were actually and physically impossible to look away from, and the brisk pace of the climax, after so. many. pages. of buildup, actually created a really wonderful, complete story that was very satisfying and which (god help me) made me cry out of a bizarre sense of *happiness* at the end.

This book is a series of letters (irritating) written from a travel-writer wife (unsympathetic and irritating) to her separated husband (tiresome and, given 20 seconds and a familiarity with Western literature, leading up to an entirely transparent "twist"). These letters start out being about her day-to-day life and a mediation on their slowly decimated marriage (something I really can't relate to), but soon they become All About Kevin. Kevin being their oldest kid, their son, and who recently (in 2000) shot up a bunch of his fellow high-schoolers. It's a post-Columbine book set in pre-911 America, and it's freakishly refreshing to read an entire novel about a national tragedy that neither mentions nor cares about terrorists, threat levels, Iraq, or What's Wrong With America?

Actually, it's vaguely framed around the Florida debacle in the 2000 presidential elections, but that event is used to throw into relief how little political issues matter when your family has been destroyed. For the most part, the narrator (Eva) talks about Kevin, why she decided to have him, what it was like to raise him, and examine the ways in which she failed as a mother and a wife.

It's weirdly inspiring. I mean, she is a bad mom. Not beating-the-kids bad, but neglectful, cold, self-centered...she is, essentially, the kind of woman who could only love a child if that was all she had left. And so in a way, she ends up raising a child who, in a bid for her affection, will take everything else away from her. It's both sick and touching, and a fascinating examination of how we're supposed to move on from tragedy, how life continues no matter how much you wish it didn't.

Kevin himself is perfectly written - both sympathetic and absolutely monstrous. By the time he's 14 and terrorizing his mother behind his father's back, I found myself completely unsurprised by everything as it unfolded. Of course he ended up killing 11 people. Of course he doesn't regret it. Of course. I'm not sure at what point, if any, decent parenting could have saved him, and I like that Lionel Shriver managed to write a lengthy book without answering, or even addressing, that question.

What struck me as the most disturbing thing, in the long run - and what's stuck with me most - is that the only thing that seems to scare the kid, and the only thing that seems to at least begin to make him snap out of his narcissistic power trip, is his impending transfer from juvie to the gen pop of a federal prison. The book never gets into it, but I found it deeply upsetting that the prison system is so horrible, mass murderers are scared of it. I kind of felt as if we're supposed to be happy that Kevin's actually scared, but I mostly was just creeped out that the system itself had managed to create something even worse than Kevin.(less)

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Sep 17, 2011

Nicola rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, overhyped, made-into-movie

I don't even know where to start with this one. The book was basically a whole load of nothing. It's the absolute definition of ''trying too hard.'' I don't care how many big words Shriver knows the meaning of. Throwing them in so often only made for muddled, disjointed, boring to read sentences.

There's no story. We know from the beginning that Kevin has shot a bunch of students dead, and then Eva goes on to tell random, often exaggerated stories from his childhood leading up to the...more

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Nov 30, 2007

Lain rated it

· review of another edition

It's hard to review this book when I am so appalled at what it represents. I appreciate the author's attempt to get into the whys and wherefores of teenage mass murderers, but I'm not sure the book deserves the attention it's gotten. While it definitely presents the story behind one such (fictional) criminal, I don't believe that Kevin's story is every school shooter's story.

I think the relationship between mother and son (a son trying desperately to get a reaction from a mother who...more

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Jun 01, 2008

Jessica rated it

· review of another edition

This book attacked my brain like a virus. The character of Kevin, the teenage murderer whose mom narrates the epistolary novel, was so disturbing and harrowingly well-drawn, that I think it caused some sort of chemical reaction in my brain. He gave me nightmares. I swear whenever I picked up the book gray clouds covered the sun.

In a series of letters to her estranged husband, narrator Eva dissects her family's life, from the decision to have a child to the day her son locked 9 classm...more

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Jan 12, 2012

Kim added it · review of another edition

This book scared the living crap out of me. (living crap? Really? Is there another kind? I mean, is it dead when it’s out of you? I’m sorry… not getting it)

I kind of sort of knew the gist of the book. It was a rubbernecker… something to do with a deviant child, national tragedy, bandwagon message but I was not expecting this. It is so well written, so proper in its delivery that it takes awhile to warm up to the protagonist as she writes these letters to her husband post traum...more

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Apr 16, 2009

Annalisa rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: language/violence/sexual content

Shelves: literary, issue, psychology, contemporary

This book explores the question of nature vs nurture. If you raise a psychopath was he born that way or did the fact that you never bonded with him turn him into one? I could see so many classic behaviors in the book, relationships I have witnessed, characteristics in people I know, that I chewed on the consequences and effects quite a bit as I read. In the end, I wasn't left with a satisfied feeling, but an empty, frustrated, almost evil one. Welcome to Eva's life.

Here's what I thin...moreThis book explores the question of nature vs nurture. If you raise a psychopath was he born that way or did the fact that you never bonded with him turn him into one? I could see so many classic behaviors in the book, relationships I have witnessed, characteristics in people I know, that I chewed on the consequences and effects quite a bit as I read. In the end, I wasn't left with a satisfied feeling, but an empty, frustrated, almost evil one. Welcome to Eva's life.

Here's what I think: the fact that Eva never wanted Kevin affected him. I think a child knows that before its born. The boy was brilliant; he had to have known from infancy that his mother's touch was cold and to know that you are unlovable certainly leaves it mark. When the only attention a child receives is negative, they'll manipulate that anger because that strength of passion is the closest thing to love they feel. But that doesn't mean that Kevin would have had a cheery happy disposition if Eva had only showered him with love. I think Kevin was born with a tendency toward the negative and Eva only expounded that. Many of these exasperated parents fall into the wrong patterns when their children push them to the edge. It is not easy to love a difficult, angry child, but to expound the situation with anger and withholdings of love is always the wrong answer. When that infant was placed in Eva's arms and she decide at that moment to play power struggle with him, she set the boundaries for a game she could not win, even if she did. And even when she realized the battle was unwinnable, she still let Kevin set the rules and drive the game instead of relenting and reevaluating the way she dealt with him. She didn't decide she loved Kevin because she was tired or lazy; she gave up the battle because he finally conceded. She won at a horrible price.

I don't think Eva ever realized just how much Kevin loved her. His hatred and desperate attempts to gain her negative attention was a manifestation of that love and her rejection of it. His rejection of his father had less to do with his shallow inane attempts at a relationship and more to do with the realization that those behaviors are what earned Eva's love. Eva shared the same disdain for life and people that Kevin did, but she was the one person who say how he was and truly rejected him for it. It must have seemed so hypocritical to him. I wanted to feel sorry for Eva, but I found her culpable. I'm not sure how much blame I place on Franklin for never listening to her concerns about Kevin and how much I think she dug her own grave. Certainly I felt her frustration and understand what it's like to feel out of sorts by disdainful personalities, but I do not exonerate her or excuse away her self-centeredness either. If Eva had tried, then Franklin would not have defended Kevin so fiercely and met her halfway. The scene where she takes Kevin to dinner and then avoids him because he trashes on her hypocrisy wanted to make me shake her. It was the one scene where I found Kevin lovable (other than when he was sick) and instead of swallowing her pride and using the opening to forge a relationship on his terms, she dismisses him. That's not to say that I could have done much better. There were times when I wanted to slap that boy and devised my own plans for power play. But I think I would have tried to love or at least understand him and experimented with different attempts at a relationship. Going through the motions was never an attempt with Eva. Every child is lovable on some level aren't they?

The writing is awfully pretentious, and it's not even the most pretentious thing about the book. All these books were inspired by Columbine. We all know that. So to write a book about school violence that takes place ten days before Columbine as if Shriver's character was the one who pushed Harris and Klebold over the edge did not sit right with me. Obviously the fictitious event had to take place sometime, but to claim that it affected history embedded in American memory is pretentious. Plus there's supposed to be a twist at the end that I found blatantly obvious from the beginning and sometimes had to reread Eva's passages because they didn't seem congruent with what I knew was coming. It doesn't always quite line up, these long-winded explanations to her husband who experienced them too. It made the writing feel more pretentious.

Shriver also pushes the envelope with her language and violence in a way that I found unnecessary. Obviously there are going to be scenes with Kevin, but the graphic nature of them was at times too much. What I found shocking was more than Shriver's distasteful way of representing the sordid details. I found it so backwards the way Eva excuses away allowing her 5-year-old to watch Braveheart, thinking he's calloused because he's stoic. A lot of Kevin's inappropriate behavior (language, disrespect for sex, disdain for life) were traits he was raised to have. The way Eva feels she is accepting and open for not setting moral boundaries is unfortunately not that uncommon. Those kids from the sixties who rejected their parents' religion and morality don't realize that those guidelines shaped them and to not offer the same universal questions to their children means that they will take their rebellion even further, to a world I can't imagine these hippie kids would embrace. It is these greater moral questions that Shriver through Eva never addresses. The leniency with which many parents raise their children has an adverse affect. They don't feel gratitude for not having restrictions; they take the dismissal of morality for granted to an alarming amount. It is the lack of morality and boundaries that I wish had been shown as just as culpable as the lack of a mother's love.(less)

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Sep 26, 2008

Jenny rated it

· review of another edition

Some readers really don't like this book and I'm not entirely sure why.

Maybe it's because I'm not a mother and I did find it believable that Eva doesn't love her son completely.

Maybe it's because I enjoy the big words that were used in the letters and found it believable that she would write this way.

Maybe I'm a sucker for good endings and this one ended with a bang.

I think the writing was superb and despite it being a hard book to read (the incid...more

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Feb 02, 2008

Libby rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2008-hits, darlings

It's official: I'm in love with Lionel Shriver. First of all, she writes novels that should be gimmicky, but are not. In The Post-Birthday World she employs a doubled narrative that splits in two at its heroine's defining moment of choice/will/agency, what have you. In We Have to Talk About Kevin she goes for the epistolary form. But in both cases, the "device" is perfectly matched to the content, like an igloo (form follows function y'all). The meaning of the novel is bound to its f...moreIt's official: I'm in love with Lionel Shriver. First of all, she writes novels that should be gimmicky, but are not. In The Post-Birthday World she employs a doubled narrative that splits in two at its heroine's defining moment of choice/will/agency, what have you. In We Have to Talk About Kevin she goes for the epistolary form. But in both cases, the "device" is perfectly matched to the content, like an igloo (form follows function y'all). The meaning of the novel is bound to its form. Second of all, her prose is fucking delicious. Her language endlessly delights me; it is crafty, artful, funny, acute, and heartbreaking. Third, she writes with more nuance than almost any other contemporary writer I've read (that's you, Kazuo Ishiguro) about the nuances and complexities of human psychology, especially in terms of how people relate to/react to each other. Fourth, no easy answers. Lionel Shriver's work is bold and often crushingly sad, because she is brave enough to explore the various unhappinesses of life on earth without offering pat answers as to its causes. Fifth, she writes about women, messy, arrogant, willfull, meek, submissive, brilliant, dim, WOMEN. God, she's so good.

As far as We Need to Talk About Kevin goes, I could not put it down. The premise is straightforward enough: the mother of a Columbine-style teen-aged killer (the titular Kevin) writes a series of letters to her husband in which she attempts to hash out the thorny questions that their son's rampage has raised vis a vis responsibility for his crime. Eva's letters constitute an amazing dissertation on the requirements of motherhood and its attendant mythology (I think I like reading Shriver's work so much in part because I always come away from it feeling more normal about my own gender fueled ambivalencies). The book dares to suggest the possibility that some people are born bad, are, from conception, simply irredeemable. It also doesn't shrink from microscopically dissecting Eva's faults, and by so doing, fingering her as culpable. As to who or what is ultimately to blame for Kevin, suffice it to say Shriver does not provide the reader with a clear answer come novel's end. Instead, she breaks your heart.(less)

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Jul 20, 2007

Barbara rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: absolutefavs

I don’t know where to start about this book. Disturbing? Terrifying? Sad? Brilliant! I could not put this book down from the minute I started it.

We Need To Talk About Kevin is from Lionel Shriver. I have never read one of her books before but this book was listed on the Staff Selection shelf at my local Chapters. (staff picks at my local Chapters haven't let me down yet) It grabbed me from the first page.

The story is told from a mother whose is trying to come to term...more

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Feb 11, 2012

Marvin rated it

· review of another edition

I do not think I alternately hated and loved a book so much since American Psycho. It is a roller coaster of a novel that doesn't flinch at the uncomfortable aspects of its story. Many reviewers dismiss the characters, especially Kevin and his mother, as unlikable. I think the author successfully portrayed them as real and, if not understandable, at least mirroring portions of our own human frailties and personalities. Kevin is the bigger puzzle and is meant to be. He kills a number of his scho...more

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Aug 15, 2008

Julie rated it

· review of another edition

It's hard to know where to start in evaluating this novel. I would fall asleep reading it, then awaken in the wee hours and turn the light on to resume reading. It's haunting and it is dark, dark, dark. It is told in first person, by Eva, the mother of Kevin, her 15-year-old son who has committed mass murder "a la Columbine" and who is incarcerated. It is told entirely through her letters to her husband, Franklin, two years after the high school massacre. (Yes indeed, a true "epis...more

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Aug 14, 2008

Alex rated it

· review of another edition

Just given this book a second reading – its beautifully written, Lionel Shriver’s prose is so elegant, so descriptive, it kind of sucks you in and carries you along, gently journeying towards its ghastly conclusion, through events that become increasingly shocking and raise so many more questions than answers. Maybe that’s why I read it for a second time – looking for the answer to the questions – hoping that if we can explain what went wrong, the final deed will somehow be easier to reconcile...more

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Apr 22, 2008

Jenna Hay rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Leah-- it's worth trying again.

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 12, 2008

Jaime rated it

· review of another edition

I don't really know where to begin here. This book was intriguing, yet very, very disturbing for a number of reasons. Eva, mother to the murdering teenage boy, is brutally honest about her misconceptions of motherhood, her feelings toward her shameless, saucy little boy, and her apparent guilt regarding his murderous rampage. Although I love her candor, I was sometimes repelled by the way in which she talked about her son. Referring to Kevin as "a little shit" as the 18 month old ...moreI don't really know where to begin here. This book was intriguing, yet very, very disturbing for a number of reasons. Eva, mother to the murdering teenage boy, is brutally honest about her misconceptions of motherhood, her feelings toward her shameless, saucy little boy, and her apparent guilt regarding his murderous rampage. Although I love her candor, I was sometimes repelled by the way in which she talked about her son. Referring to Kevin as "a little shit" as the 18 month old stood defiantly in his crib, forcing herself to make a vow to be nicer to him as a three year old, and having to determinedly think about offering up any kind of affection to the boy is just beyond my comprehension. Clearly, motherhood was not something that came easily to Eva; instead her maternal instincts were cold and contrived. Does that make her responsible for what her son ultimately became? Absolutely not. Although Eva is far from mother of the year, I truly believe that Kevin had something inherently wrong with him. Sure Eva wasn't always warm and fuzzy, but there is no denying that Kevin's actions (from a frighteningly early age) were premeditated, malicious, and calculating. This could not be the sole cause of the environment in which he grew up. Even so, I'd place more of the blame for Kevin's actions and behaviors on his father, Franklin. Although Eva was chilly, Franklin tried too hard to be Kevin's friend and defended him time and again when Kevin was questioned about, well, you name it--tormenting his kindergarten classmates, causing a neighbor's bicycle accident, throwing bricks from a bridge onto a highway, etc. etc. Franklin always saw good in Kevin; at least Eva saw her son for the monster he truly was. With that said, this is definitely a book I would recommend reading. Although I can't say I loved any of the characters (except, perhaps, poor little Celia), they were well developed and remained true throughout the novel. The pacing of the novel was good, allowing the reader to gain just the right amount of insight into Kevin and his family at the appropriate time in the book. What I liked best was that the author led up to a much needed climax with an excruciating ending that I didn't see coming. (less)

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Apr 25, 2011

Jennifer rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: read-pre-2011

I couldn't put this book down. Harrowing it is; disturbing, upsetting, shocking - but brilliant.
It is very hard to identify with the main character; but by doing this, by alienating the reader through unnecessarily complicated language and an ultimately unsympathetic narrator, the author ensures the reader does not automatically take her side in the debate. This makes you start to question her viewpoint rather than just accepting it, opening the book up to the moral debate that is at the ...more

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Nov 16, 2011

Marzie rated it

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Shelves: favourites, fiction

I read this book in 2006 when I saw it in a new authors section at B&N I can honestly say that this story has never left my thoughts. First the brilliance of Shriver choosing to write this entirely in the epistolary form. Odd at first yet by the time you are done reading it is hard to imagination any other way this could have been told to the reader. I knew nothing about this book or author when I came across it other than it had some decent reviews and the story sounded interesting. To go into...more

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Mar 16, 2011

Kiersten rated it

· review of another edition

I did not like this book. Honestly, what was to like about it? The topic is horrifying, the characters are hateful (and not just the characters that commit mass murders) and the writing style is the worst of all.

From the first page I was SO irritated by the writing. I'll bet that the first purchase Ms. Shriver (and yes, Lionel is a woman) made after finding a publisher for this book was new thesaurus. I'm positive that hers was absolutely worn out. It was like, "Hi! Let's s...moreI did not like this book. Honestly, what was to like about it? The topic is horrifying, the characters are hateful (and not just the characters that commit mass murders) and the writing style is the worst of all.

From the first page I was SO irritated by the writing. I'll bet that the first purchase Ms. Shriver (and yes, Lionel is a woman) made after finding a publisher for this book was new thesaurus. I'm positive that hers was absolutely worn out. It was like, "Hi! Let's see how fancy we can sound!" Especially for a book that is supposedly made up of letters written to one's estranged husband. The letter format was an especially poorly-chosen literary device. I get that we, the reader, needed background, but did Eva really think that her husband needed to be reminded, among other things, about all the random little details of his childhood? They were his memories, after all. Why did she need to repeat them to him, and in such an arrogant, condescending way? And the lists of other school shootings. Blah. I became extremely tired of reading about those as Eva ticked them off. I felt like I was hearing a lecture or a compilation of NPR news stories.

But speaking of arrogant and condescending, here's another problem that I had with this book. I happen to reject the idea that the parents are 100% responsible for their children's failures or successes. Some children have crappy parents and turn out great, and I've seen the opposite happen as well. However, if any parent could cause a child to go crazy/homicidal, it would be this woman. Hello, being bored=not a good reason to have a child. (Did I really need to say that?) Eva was mean, negative, and overbearing throughout the book. And again, I realize that with the letter format, we are only getting the viewpoint of one, limited, character, but that's not an excuse for making the characters so completely one-dimensional. Kevin was evil, Celia was demure, Franklin was naive, Eva was obnoxious, etc.

Finally, the question of the big reveal. And I actually do have a question about this. It was pretty obvious what was going on, that there was going to be a big reveal, after about page 3 of the book (and I'm not talking about the fact that Kevin killed his classmates. That was not meant to be a secret. It was written in the description on the back of the book). My question is this--was this just poorly written so that what was meant to be a big reveal was, well, not? Or did Shriver make it obvious on purpose, in order to make it more awful to read--we knew what was going to happen, and we didn't want to read it, but we were going to have to and were coming closer to it with each page. I'm going to give Shriver the benefit of the doubt on this one, because if that's what she meant to do, it worked. (less)

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Aug 02, 2011

Lisa rated it

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Recommended to Lisa by: Mum; Gaye

Shelves: 2011, kindle-baby, own, guardian-1000, faves, 2011s-most-enjoyed

It seems I’ve had a staggeringly good run of books lately topped off with this superb novel, which is one of those books that is sure to stick in the memory for quite a long time to come as Shriver imagines the unimaginable – what it's like for the parent of a child who’s committed a truly monstrous act, in this case a school shooting.

Eva Katchadourian chronicles her grief and guilt in the aftermath of her son’s killings, as well as looking back and examining all of the little fears, f...more

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Jul 28, 2010

jo marked it as not-for-me-now · review of another edition

Recommended to jo by: sharon

Shelves: great-britain

read a few chapters of it. impressive. more later.

***

still at it. it will probably take me a year to read it. english people write difficult language. i wish my sister in law and good friend sharon told me how long it took her to get through a page. it takes me about 4 mins and 23 seconds.

***

i really, really like this book. shriver is an immensely talented writer with fireworky facility with language and a ton of deep and true things to say about o...more

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Jun 05, 2008

Terry rated it

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Shelves: fiction

This book made me feel...icky. I had heard many good things about it for years, since the hardcover was first released, and I was looking forward to reading it. It literally made me feel like I needed to take a purifying shower afterwards. I did not even want to have the book in my bedroom!

I was also shocked to find out it is/was considered by some reviewers to be a "feminist" book. Um, what? I mean, okay, the female main character (I can't even bring myself to call her a pro...more

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Jan 29, 2008

Katherine Granich rated it

· review of another edition

What a creepy book this was. I'd seen Elephant at the Auckland Film Festival a few years back (before Baby, when I actually had time and money to spend on frivolosities like film festival tickets) and thought it was an original, compelling take on the teenage-murder-rampage-at-school theme. This book was touted as another fresh and compelling portrayal of a teenager gone bad, told from his mother's perspective, and I started reading it when I was pregnant and wondering if my own imminent spawn w...more

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Nov 05, 2007

Brian rated it

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Recommends it for: I'm still struggling to answer that...

Shelves: fiction, trophy-shelf

As beautiful as it is haunting. The intimate details neatly cover the underlying theme of this book: That when there's nothing left to create, destruction itself becomes a form of creation. That absence of purpose eventually gives rise to a purpose of absence, and even meaning and truth are subjected to their own demise.

It's an interesting premise, and a bit unsettling to consider that the havoc, chaos and despair of this world is also the driving force behind it's progress. That...more

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Sep 26, 2008

Sarah rated it

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Shelves: fiction, booksread2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I really liked this book for several reasons. Lionel Shriver doesn't try to *trick* or talk down to the reader. She has created a character (Eva) who is not only brutally honest, but makes no apologies. Eva is not a sympathetic character and I really appreciated that. A book about 'blah blah blah - violence in schools - blah blah blah - why why why?' could so easily have been cliche but Shriver takes a completely different approach to an already overplayed topic. What if your child is truly a ba...moreI really liked this book for several reasons. Lionel Shriver doesn't try to *trick* or talk down to the reader. She has created a character (Eva) who is not only brutally honest, but makes no apologies. Eva is not a sympathetic character and I really appreciated that. A book about 'blah blah blah - violence in schools - blah blah blah - why why why?' could so easily have been cliche but Shriver takes a completely different approach to an already overplayed topic. What if your child is truly a bad seed? What if his sociopathic tendencies have been so cleverly executed that your family thinks you are the crazy one and not your son? Eva talks at length, honestly and openly, about how from the minute her son was born she never felt an attachment to him. She never directly questions why her son did what he did. In many ways, she is as emotionally cold and detached as Kevin. Even her relationship with her daughter is without extreme emotion. What makes this book so creepy is that Eva never truly makes the connection just how alike she and her son are. Also, I liked that Kevin did not fall into the stereotype of 'school shooter'. Even better, he didn't use a gun. He's a very interesting character study -- not your typical 'oh poor me, the world is out to get me, i wear trench coats and black coats to stand out and I have access to a gun' character. Shriver has created a sociopath who deserves his own follow up novel.
I never thought that Eva's journey was cathartic nor did I think that Shriver was disguising the fact that the letters Eva writes were to her deceased husband. I think Eva wanted to put her journey in writing in hopes of having a better understanding. There is no answer to why kids act the way they do. And Kevin is an entirely different breed of interesting and terrifying kid. Eva has nothing left to lose, so through her letters she can express the utmost honesty. I believe that she did love her husband, but Shriver never makes this relationship overdramtic, in keeping with Eva's nature.
(less)

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Sep 14, 2007

Recynd rated it

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Shelves: loved-it, all-time-favorites, fiction

What a terrific read; brilliant writing, well-developed and interesting characters, masterful story-telling...I haven't read a book this original and compelling in ages. Plus, so dark!

After reading some of the other reviews, I gave my own impressions of this book more thought. Perhaps I mistook the author's decent vocabulary for good writing skills? Maybe the characters weren't as fleshed out as I had thought; was Eva not only shallow but one-dimensional, as well? Was Kevin a cli...more

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Jun 25, 2008

Maria M. rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: owned, 5-stars, 2008, fiction

Once again a book I started but couldn't get through, only to pick it up for a book club some years later and find utterly impossible to put down.

We Need To Talk About Kevin is a very difficult book to read, and one that will make you question whether or not you really want to have children, when it can go so horribly wrong. In fact, it's a book that might actually make you scared to have children, because of how Kevin acts towards his mother from the very beginning.

Whi...more

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Nov 19, 2007

Eileen rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: american-writers, fiction

I let out a sigh of relief as I closed this book. A book that should have taken me a few days to read ended up in an 8 day struggle. I expected a third person narrative of a fictional school shooting. I was excited to see how Shriver would handle all the angles and different perspectives of everyone that is involved with a school shooting. What I ended up with was a compilation of angered ridden letters addressed to the Eva Khatchadourian’s (mother of the murderer) ex husband.

In thes...moreI let out a sigh of relief as I closed this book. A book that should have taken me a few days to read ended up in an 8 day struggle. I expected a third person narrative of a fictional school shooting. I was excited to see how Shriver would handle all the angles and different perspectives of everyone that is involved with a school shooting. What I ended up with was a compilation of angered ridden letters addressed to the Eva Khatchadourian’s (mother of the murderer) ex husband.

In these letters Eva described what life was like for her from Kevins first day to the present day 2 year anniversary of his crime. Her reasons for having a child disgusted me...(she was simply bored)
If a situation did not benefit her she then blamed someone else for the down fall. In this case she blamed her ex husband and her son. To feel the coldness from her personality jump right off the page…it still haunts me now hours after putting the book down. As a fellow goodreader put it..the book has left me dispirited.

The first inclination Shriver gave me that Eva would disappoint was when Eva’s pretentiousness and arrogance filtered through out every sentence in the first few pages. Her constant harping on the nagative of a country she hardly knew disturbed and frustrated me.
By living abroad I often bump into guilt ridden, anti-America Americans. Every country has its good and evil. It astonishes me when people fail to see the beauty of the history, land, culture and people of their native country. When talking to people like Eva I sadly do not have any tolerance for that negative opinion. I politely bow out of conversation before my own tongue gets me in trouble.

Despite my negative opinion of this book I do feel as though Shriver excelled at the task in which she set out to do. It truly does deserve 5 stars. Eva was well developed and very real. Not once did I say, “ oh that would never happen.” Every sentence was extremely well written. Perhaps if I had children or had more life experience my opinion would be different. Perhaps in 30 years time I will be able to give it 5 stars. But until then I wont be revisting We Need To Talk About Kevin any time soon.

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Dec 13, 2007

Allison rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: teachers, people considering motherhood

Shelves: top-12

I read this book at my cousin's demand. And I have to thank her. I've been pimping this book out since. I can usually blow thorugh a 400-page book in an afternoon. Not this one. The language and complicated themes won't allow it. I like that about this book. It took me a week to read and in doing so is the first book in a long time that I've read that I feel I got my whole 15 dollars worth.

The letter format is fantastic. In 400 pages, I never get bored by this technique and I can onl...more

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Nov 26, 2011

Laurie rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: there-will-be-blood, crazy-town

Could also be called 'We Need To Talk About A Thesaurus'

Kevin's mother tells this story through some long tedious letters filled with big huge words. This goes on for about 250 pages. I was about to lose it myself, Kevin.

But as we get down deeper, this book just takes on a life of its own. Understanding Kevin's mind, the clothes he wears; the details are portrayed perfectly in this evil character. It's like he's breathing over your shoulder ...watching you shiver.
...more

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Jul 07, 2011

Maggie rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: books-for-challenges

Absorbing story of a co-dependent relationship of sorts between a mother and her son. He is the perpetrator of a high school mass shooting. Neither of these characters are particularly appealing, yet each at times shows insight into the other. I found the final paragraphs unlikely and yet at the same time all too believable. I felt the book began a little slowly, but about 100 pages in the story grips you. The reader is left to decide how much of the tale is accurate and how much is the distorte...more

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The Movie	13	139	9 hours, 16 min ago
Was Kevin born evil?	6	77	9 hours, 20 min ago
Young-Adult Book ...: We Need To Talk About Kevin	1	1	15 hours, 42 min ago
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The Group That Reads: Lionel Shriver Wonders Why Anyone Has Kids...	1	2	Jan 28, 2012 05:17am
*~Bookworms Anony...:** November 2011 Book of the Month Discussions	3	23	Nov 06, 2011 05:28pm

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About Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver's novels include the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the 2005 Orange Prize and has now sold over a million copies worldwide. Earlier books include Double Fault, A Perfectly Good Family, and Checker and the Derailleurs. Her novels have been translated into twenty-five languages. Her journalism h...more

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“...You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.” — 46 people liked it

“Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.” — 23 people liked it

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