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Summary: The question of who's to blame for teenage atrocity tortures our narrator, Eva Khatchadourian. Two years ago, her 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?
Review: 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.
While the strength of Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult is that it makes you feel sympathetic with the school shooter, the strength of We Need to Talk... is that it doesn't - but it doesn't make you hate him either. It left me thinking - wondering what I would do if I were in Eva's shoes, finding myself ladled with an infant who - according to all evidence - hated me for no particular reason.
( Spoiler )
The age old debate of nature vs nurture is raised once again in a powerful and spellbinding way. I would recommend it to anybody, but realize not everybody would be able to stomach it as it is as disturbing as it is fascinating.
A book I expect will stay with me for a very long time.
Book List
| Title: We Need To Talk About Kevin Author: Lionel Shriver Genre: Fiction Rating: 10/10 # pages: 400 Date read: June, 2008 |
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Summary: The question of who's to blame for teenage atrocity tortures our narrator, Eva Khatchadourian. Two years ago, her 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?
Review: 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.
While the strength of Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult is that it makes you feel sympathetic with the school shooter, the strength of We Need to Talk... is that it doesn't - but it doesn't make you hate him either. It left me thinking - wondering what I would do if I were in Eva's shoes, finding myself ladled with an infant who - according to all evidence - hated me for no particular reason.
( Spoiler )
The age old debate of nature vs nurture is raised once again in a powerful and spellbinding way. I would recommend it to anybody, but realize not everybody would be able to stomach it as it is as disturbing as it is fascinating.
A book I expect will stay with me for a very long time.
Book List
