Page Ten

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Why did I pick this book up? I kept asking myself that after I got to around page 100 of this book, and then for the next 300 pages after that. I had heard about it through a colleague, and when I was mucking about Chevalier's website I saw this book listed on her reading list. Beside it, in parentheses, she had written "Not for the faint of heart." I admit I was enticed.

I had nearly given up and tossed it aside when I first began. The writing seemed pretentious. Shriver seemed to be trying to get across how smart she was instead of writing a book. I was annoyed, and bored. I picked it up the next day, after having read about 60 or so pages. And I didn't put it down until midnight that night when I had finished it. I had to read it in one day, because extending reading it would prolong the dark, depressing, frightening feeling it gave me.

The book is narrated by Eva. She is married to Franklin (the book is actually a series of letters written to her, we are led to believe, estranged husband). She is in her 30s and goes through questioning if she wants a child. She obviously doesn't, but ends up pregnant with Kevin, a boy who from the start is obviously disturbed. Eva finds out she doesn't really like her own son. After all, she never really wanted him. But she tries. She even becomes a stay at home mother in an attempt to bond with him. It doesn't work. The novel becomes confessional, as Eva writes to her husband in an attempt to explain her feelings towards Kevin and motherhood (her husband, having been at work during the days, and always, madenningly, sticking up for the two-faced Kevin, didn't know everything that went on when he left the house) as well as an attempt to try to understand why Kevin did what he did - was it caused by a mother who never really wanted him?

What Kevin did, and what the novel grimly leads up to, is how he went on a rampage killing seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a teacher, just days before turning sixteen. The novel also foreshadows something equally, if not more so, horrific, that becomes the official, shocking climax.

Do I recommend this book? If only for having someone else to discuss it with, then yes, but if it's pleasure reading you're after, you're likely better off if you didn't talk about Kevin. Don't get me wrong - it's well-written, even witty in some parts, and there is something oddly delicate at the novel's conclusion, but it really is not for the faint of heart. It forces you to wonder: what if you genuinely don't like your own child? What if you feel you give your child everything, and he or she just turns out wrong?