goodreads: (Default)
[personal profile] goodreads
Book List
Title: We Need To Talk About Kevin
Author: Lionel Shriver
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 10/10
# pages: 400
Date read: June, 2008


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.
That said, I found it extremely telling that SHE was the one left alive rather than the father who adored him.

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
This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
No Subject Icon Selected
More info about formatting

Profile

goodreads: (Default)
goodreads

July 2025

S M T W T F S
  12345
6789101112
13 141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 19th, 2025 12:43
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios