Lionel Shriver

WINNER OF THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2005 Two years ago, Eva Khatchadourian?s 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? Lionel Shriver tells a compelling, absorbing, and resonant story while framing these horrifying tableaux of teenage carnage as metaphors for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.

We Need to Talk about Kevin

The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry Eva never really wanted to be a mother—and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

A Novel

We Need to Talk About Kevin

High Fidelity

Socially, Kevin camouflaged himself with just enough “friends” so as not to appear, alarmingly, a loner. They were all mediocrities—exceptional mediocrities, if there is such a thing—or outright cretins like Lenny Pugh. They all pursued this minimalist approach to education, and they didn’t get into trouble. They may well have led a whole secret life behind this gray scrim of bovine obedience, but the one thing that didn’t raise a red flag at his high school was being suspiciously drab. The mask was perfect.

“I kept them up for my sanity,” I said. “I needed to see something you’d done to me, to reach out and touch it. To prove that your malice wasn’t all in my head.”

“Yeah,” he said, tickling the scar on his arm again. “Know what you mean.”

Ever notice how many films portray pregnancy as infestation, as colonization by stealth? Rosemary’s Baby was just the beginning. In Alien, a foul extraterrestrial claws its way out of John Hurt’s belly. In Mimic, a woman gives birth to a two-foot maggot. Later, the X-Files turned bug-eyed aliens bursting gorily from human midsections into a running theme. In horror and sci-fi, the host is consumed or rent, reduced to husk or residue so that some nightmare creature may survive its shell.

I have experienced my share of burning sexual desire, and I can assure you that this was an urgency of another order. I wanted to arrange a backup, for you and for us, like slipping a carbon in my IBM Selectric. I wanted to make sure that if anything happened to either of us there would be something left beside socks. Just that night I wanted a baby stuffed in every cranny like money in jars, like hidden bottles of vodka for weak-willed alcoholics.

You made me greedy. Like any addict worth his salt, I wanted more. And I was curious. I wondered how it felt when it was a piping voice calling, “Momm-MEEE?” from around that same corner. You started it—like someone who gives you a gift of a single carved ebony elephant, and suddenly you get this idea that it might be fun to start a collection.

perfection in its most twisted form. can’t wait to reread and can’t stop thinking about it

Nina

Eva Ströberg

I watched the film before I read the book and boy was Ezra Miller so good at playing Kevin.

So when I was reading this book, it was him that I pictured how Kevin was.
Unlike the film, the book was comprised of series of letters from Eva to her husband Franklin, after the "Thursday" incident. The letters revealed a little by little about how it all started and how it ended.
 
The book is all about the big question: Can a kid be evil from the start, or that the rejections that he continually felt from his mother made him evil? 

All in all, a very very good reading.

we need to talk about franklin. we need to talk about abortion rights. we need to talk about gun control. we need to talk about the patriarchy.

Cass Fox

Lindy

Densely written, We Need to Talk About Kevin walks the line between hyperrealism and cartoon. I think it's intentional.

Andrew John Kinney

I know I won't have time to do a real review, so suffice it to say that, while the story is a bit of a downer, that Lionel Shriver really can write! What a vocabulary, what wonderful turns of phrase, and the story is compelling, a page turner, with a twist at the end.

Lamia Hajani

I read on Kindle, so I know what percentage I am at in a book, and it made me realize that the last quarter of the book literally bumped it to 4 stars. I think the beginning is a bit too long-winded, it takes way too long to set up the brunt of the story, and, even though it gets just a bit more interesting once Kevin is born, it still all feels drawn out.

But that's the bad. The good is that the book becomes impossible to put down once you are 3/4 in. The last 150 pages or so are jaw-dropping. Just amazing writing. Shriver's style of writing through the mother in a letter format is perfect in this book.

So, in the end, I knocked off only one star because the beginning makes it not-5-star-worthy. Besides the drawn out-ness, the book deserves 5 stars. I'd recommend every avid reader read this book.

Briar's Reviews

I made it about half way through this book and I can honestly say it is NOT for me. It was so hard to read with how brutal the Mother sees her son and how evil he seemed to be. Lionel's writing is so incredible, but the story itself made me feel sick.

And I'm sure you can pick apart this book. There's no way a kid is evil from the get go in a "realistic" book (this isn't sci-fi or fantasy). The Mother herself could be putting this image on the kid since she is all about herself. There's so many options, but I just couldn't do it. 

So this is a one star/DNF book for me. I tried, I really did. I'm sure any other readers will enjoy it, but I know when to stop for my own sanity and mental health.

andi valdes

I feel like this book was badly executed. While the vocabulary is Impressive, I feel like words such as "agog", "traipse", and "maunder" should be used sparingly, rather than in bursts that shoot at the sentence --which would sometimes go on forever-- and stumble the reader. The book felt overwritten, I understand that the reader needs background but the letter format and the excessive unnecessary details and mundane were too much distraction from the actual Event. I understand that Eva was trying to embrace commonplace and trivial happenings but there's a point when the reader's head is too occupied making sense of what Franklin and Eva thought of the "nice luncheon" and trying to understand what this sentence means:

  "Later these thoughts would come back to haunt me, though I could not have anticipated that your compulsion to manhandle your unruly, misshapen experience into a tidy box, like someone trying to cram a wild tangle of driftwood into a hard-shell Samsonite suitcase, as well as this sincere confusion of the is with the ought to be—your heartrending tendency to mistake what you actually had for what you desperately wanted—would produce such devastating consequences."

 I think I understand what atmosphere Shriver was thinking of the deciding to write the book in a letter-format, however I feel like such atmosphere could have been achieved by a tweaking of the details included and the way the insight into Eva's thoughts and experiences were handled.

Left me quite speechless and thinking - it raised more questions than it delivered answers. It made me play the blame game; mother or son, nature or nurture? 

A bit terrifying, but not fantastical. Realistic enough to serve as an exposè of the reality in many American states. Engaging and at points I couldn't put it down. 

Sasha Kovacs

Left me quite speechless and thinking - it raised more questions than it delivered answers. It made me play the blame game; mother or son, nature or nurture? 

A bit terrifying, but not fantastical. Realistic enough to serve as an exposè of the reality in many American states. Engaging and at points I couldn't put it down. 

Anna Ureta

Jeannette Ordas

Is it wrong to give up on a book? I just couldn't do it. When I heard about the movie, I thought, wow, great subject matter. Then when I found out it was a book, I put it on hold at the library. However, I'm ankle-deep and I just can't get any further. The story-telling gimmick (told in letters) just doesn't seem to hold up. I thought I'd give it a few more pages, but when I read a bit further of the mom's visits with her son in prison, I just couldn't buy the language. What NYC teenager uses the phrase "stones" when talking about balls? Boring.

Gayathri Jinesh

'We need to talk about Kevin' is Lionel Shriver's debut novel. With nearly 500 pages, written in the form of letters to her husband, Eva recalls the upbringing of Kevin, their first-borne; from his birth till his incarceration at the age of 15 for mass murder. Certain books give away a feeling of it being the author's life's work. Like 'All the light we cannot see' or 'To kill a mocking bird'. It could be the length, or how it asks all the right questions or how polished the whole thing is. It appears to the reader that the author has put their everything into it. I was surprised to find that, this isn't her only book.

This book isn't for everyone, and I believe there would only be a handful who resonate with it. There is a stencil of societal norms that rudely pervades every individual's thoughts and actions, at some point in late childhood or adolescence demanding us to walk within its bounds. This permanently molds our perspective. Societal norms guiding our actions are commonplace. Guiding our thoughts? Not so much. Thinking that the person next to you is really ugly, or that you really don't want to be with your partner anymore, or wishing you didn't have to take care of your sick mother are not really unfair thoughts. People understand these, even though they are not talked about or acted upon.

Eva wishes her child wasn't born, so she could go gallivanting across the globe. Eva hates her child. She never tells anyone that, of course.


  Blessed with the miracle of new life, she chooses to dwell instead on a forgone glass of wine and the veins in her legs


Now if I could get my mother to read this book(which would be unlikely), she would fling this book out the window before the first chapter was over. And since the copy I got from the thrift store didn't have the first few pages, I bet something very similar did happened before. Most people would find Eva's thoughts unsavory. One-shalt-not-think-of such things. It is a thought crime. For the reader the usual frame of reference is lost. An average person cannot relate with Eva. Perspective is to be skewed to an uncomfortable degree to watch Eva's story through her eyes. Eva's narrative appears to be honest, primarily because she doesn't make the whole thing a white washing scheme for herself; she admits to being wrong at times, but whether it was just those times or were there more, we would never know.

As you would have presumed by now, this is not a happy book. Moments of happiness in this book are as sparse as stars in the night sky. The whole thing is dark. And when everything is going wrong, of course there should be someone to blame. In a book in which the ending is given away in its blurb itself, the captivating element is this mental exercise for the observer to figure out why this happened and who to blame. You get to play seesaw with the nature vs. nurture debate.

Throughout the novel one's opinion about each character would change. They certainly are not one dimensional, though Kevin appears to have no dimension at all. Kevin has no attachment to anything, person or object. He has no passion for anything. He has been in equilibrium since birth. A person's inclination(as well as circumstance) is what cuts a path for their life. Kevin who was inclined towards nothing; loved nothing, hated nothing, ends up killing people. The disinclination/whatever attitude, leads to evil in its purest form. Why did it slide in that direction? There should have been an equal probability of good in its purest form. The idea that goodness is always an uphill climb and evil is the stable low energy state is frightening, yet it could actually be the truth. 

The book questions every aspect of parenting without pulling any punches.

  "..if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation: the displacement amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your children's answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring"


Oh, I had all the answers when I started reading it, only by the end there were none. By the end I was going over chapters I had already read, when I couldn't believe what I was reading. Every minute I had to rearrange my mind to believe that this was only fiction, because over 400 pages of buildup to this tipping point, is insanely good writing - horrifying yet surprisingly immersive and original.

If you own an open mind, patience, a taste for good writing and at least had a passing interest in psychology, this would be just right for you.

Janice Hopper

This was a very uncomfortable book to read. I kept wondering if Eva was an unreliable narrator, or if Kevin was really as evil as she portrays him. If he was really that bad, I find it inconceivable that his father wouldn't have noticed SOMETHING. Eva and her husband supposedly had such a great marriage before Kevin was born, but her husband trusted NONE of her perceptions. That seems off to me.

But it's thought-provoking and well-written. But I'll never read it again.

Irene Alegre

Huh.

I can't talk about Kevin right now.
The ending was completely devastating, and strangely unexpected.

Eva Bailey

This was not at all what I expected, it was so shocking and upsetting. Very slow until the end when I could not stop reading, one of the most stressful reading experiences I have had in a long time. I really enjoyed the letter writing style.

Jordan /

Tameka Young

I think this book had good intentions, but there was something about the prose and language that just didn't sit well with me. The subject matter is absolutely horrific but for some reason, I just felt so disconnected from the narrator. It felt like I was going to be tested after I read it. I would recommend this only if you're really curious about it and you have a dictionary nearby.

sin h.

what an utterly exhausting and headache inducing book.
• so hard to get through. once I started skipping sections - even entire pages at times - this book was much more manageable and attention grabbing.
• so overwritten. were pages and pages of eva's stream of consciousness really necessary? especially when she's practically expressing the same sentiment over and over again? 
• unlikable characters. which, yeah, obviously. but it just made it that much harder to get through the book.
• god do I despise the willfully ignorant in denial dad trope in these types of novels.
• we already know the ending of this book (for the most part), so naturally the reading experience relies heavily on everything that comes before. and it all fell flat.
• can't deny that Shriver successfully did what she wanted to do. had me wondering and ruminating appropriately. it just wasn't enough.

I'm not quite sure what to to think of this but it was excellent. And very unsettling. I will come back to this space.

Richard Binder

Now a major motion picture starring Tilda Swinton. Published in twenty-eight countries. Over a million copies sold worldwide. Two years ago Eva Khatchadourian’s son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker and a popular teacher. Now, in a series of letters to her absent husband, Eva recounts the story of how Kevin came to be Kevin. 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? When did it all start to go wrong? Or was it, in fact, ever ‘right’ at all? Lionel Shriver tells a compelling, absorbing, and resonant story while framing the horrifying tableau of teenage carnage as a metaphor for the larger tragedy—the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose. ‘By far the best novel I’ve read in years...exquisitely crafted...a breathtaking work of art.’ Age ‘Brilliant...compulsive.’ Guardian ‘A great read with horrifying twists and turns.’ Marie Claire ‘Harrowing, tense and thought-provoking, this is a vocal challenge to every accepted parenting manual you’ve ever read.’ Daily Mail

Uniquely written, with an interesting layout and beautiful literature. All of the characters were disgustingly well detailed, with development and depth unmatched. One of the most revoltingly fascinating books i’ve ever read!

Caroline Lewicki

If you've ever thought about not having children, don't read "We Need to Talk About Kevin"...it will absolutely terrify you into never bringing life into this world.

I absolutely loved this book and the style of storytelling Lionel Shriver fully harnesses. You'll be left feeling haunted by each character. You'll feel frustrated every time Franklin undermines Eva and leaves Kevin to his own devices. And then the ending comes and you feel everything. I highly recommend this book, especially if you've seen and enjoyed the movie - there's so much more to be unpacked in the book.

Samantha T-E

This book is awful and it hurt. If you only read books to be entertained it is not for you, I do however have to recommend it in general. The first half was hard to get through. The author uses what seems like unnecessarily large words and alienates the audience, about two thirds of the way through it becomes fairly obvious this was done on purpose. I wasn't enjoying myself but I had to finish it. I won't spoil anything so all I can say is that this is a book about terrible people (read terrible people to mean honest people) in a terrible situation of almost entirely their own creation. 

You should read it, but don't expect to like it.

Natalie Manuel

Unfortunately while reading this I felt that it is too obvious the author has never had a child and hasn't wanted one. Not because I don't believe women can be underwhelmed by birth and babyness, but the way she has a mother talk about both children simply doesn't ring true. I can't quite pin point it but there is a bitterness in this 'worst case scenerio' that a mother or someone who wants to be a mother wouldn't have.

I think the book suffers from having an unreliable narrator, because it makes it difficult to really 'talk about Kevin' in any way other than the demonised boy his mother sees. And what she sees sometimes is obvious ridiculous. Babies refuse the breast OFTEN, it doesn't mean he was some angry little soul destined to kill people the second he came out. 

I don't mind unlikeable characters in books, but the narrator is so unlikeable that it makes it difficult to trust anything she says.

On the other hand, the interesting part of the novel is the idea that Kevin's behaviour is like it is because he DID need his distant, non maternal mother to notice him. His decision not to 'hide' much of his true nature when interacting with her was a warped and twisted sign of affection.

It is also interesting to read about a woman who loves her husband more than her children. It's not as uncommon as people think and it is difficult and challenging to relate to. We often hear of men who feel jealous of a new baby, but rarely of a woman who resents her own child for coming between her primary relationship.

All in all, the novel is a bit over the top at times and probably would have benefited from two narrative techniques so that we could see the contrast between the real Kevin and the version his mother saw.

The ending is rushed and doesn't feel true to the rest of the novel.

We Need to Talk about Kevin

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