We Need to Talk About Kevin

[Lisa]

March group read from the 100

[Buck]

I started this just yesterday. The format is letters from Eva to Franklin, long letters, long-winded letters. Apparently Eva feels the need to talk not only about Kevin but about Eva and Franklin, too. The prose style is smart, sophisticated, rambling. Her re-enactments of their long-ago arguments is a negative for me. I don't enjoy bickering in fiction (or otherwise.) So far, I'm not particularly enjoying this read, but I hope it will build.

Anybody else reading this? Or have you already read it?

[Buck]

Shriver's epistolary form seems a ploy rather than a literary device. 400 pages of letters in five months? - from mid November 2000 to early April 2001. Really? I was on the verge of rating this two stars and abandoning it, but now in the second half of January, I've decided to stick with it, at least for the time being. It's gone from mostly being a rehash of their early marriage tiffs, to Kevin's history as a young problem child and Eva's general wariness and weariness of him. What turned me around was Eva's conversation with another mother in the visitor's waiting room at the juvenile detention facility - the first complete scene to take place after Kevin's horrific act.

It's unusual, I think, for a male author to write a novel from the first person viewpoint of a woman.

[Lisa]

The first two chapters are tough going, but then it gets gripping.

Shrivel is a woman. She changed her name at 15 to something she preferred (previously Margaret).

I read this when working in child psychiatry. And although I think it's one of the best books I've ever read, I hesitate to reread it.

[Lisa]

When Eva speaks about Kevin as a child, I struggled to separate the idea between an inherently evil being vs one who was not taught otherwise. Her disappointment in his existence in her life definitely effected how she raised him.

[Buck]

Lisa wrote: "The first two chapters are tough going, but then it gets gripping.

Shrivel is a woman. She changed her name at 15 to something she preferred (previously Margaret)."


The image in Lionel Shriver's photo on Goodreads appears male, but now that I enlarge it I can see lipstick.

[Lisa]

It is a masculine-looking pic,I think it the addition of the hat. Google her.
I think I remember from an interview that the masculine name allows her to be taken more seriously.

[Buck]

Lisa wrote: "It is a masculine-looking pic,I think it the addition of the hat. Google her.
I think I remember from an interview that the masculine name allows her to be taken more seriously."

Like George Elliot and James Tiptree, Jr.

[Lisa]

It's interesting that even in today's world women feel that they aren't taken as seriously as men.

[Buck]

Lisa wrote: "When Eva speaks about Kevin as a child, I struggled to separate the idea between an inherently evil being vs one who was not taught otherwise. Her disappointment in his existence in her life defini..."

Kevin wasn't quite right from the time he was a baby. Eva may not have been a perfect mother, but who is? He seemed sociopathic from very early on. You're right that her relationship with Kevin was shaped very much by Keven - a self-defeating feedback loop.

I find Eva to be a bit smug, and perhaps, that literary phrase, an unreliable narrator.

[Lisa]

Forensic psychiatry speak about 'the cold, callous child'. The child who has no empathy & no conscience, genetic factors & parenting factors contribute to this.

The movie focussed on Eva's lack of attachment to her unborn then infant son; she does not want the pregnancy, he is a hindrance. This would prevent them from bonding correctly. I know that no parent is perfect, but there is something about Eva that felt very rejecting from the start, baby's pick up on that & react. She's not at all empathic with her own child & I wondered if the Kevin described is possibly initially distorted by her own deep abhorrence for her child. We see him as bad because she sees him as bad, he becomes bad.

[Buck]

I recant my complaint about Eva's long letters.

While the first quarter or so of this book is insufferable, its culmination is horrifically compelling, especially the shocking morbid revelation about (view spoiler)[Celia and Franklin. (hide spoiler)]

I didn't know they had made a movie.

[Lisa]

The movie:
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) - IMDb
www.imdb.com/title/tt1242460/

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) Trailer - YouTube
Video for we need to talk about kevin film▶ 1:41
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLRgAe2jLaw

I thought the movie was a good interpretation of the book. It showed at the art house cinema's here.

(view spoiler)[I think that was the worst part for me. I consistently wondered where Franklin was, then why he had left Eva to cope with Kevin when he was always Kevin's support. Celia for me was pure sadness. (hide spoiler)]