It is masterfully written, in my opinion.

I need to declare at the outset that I loved this book. Kevin, at the tender and cleverly calculated age of 15 years and 362 days, commits mass murder in his school gym. These missives form a chronological examination of her life before and after the entrance of their son Kevin into their lives (or perhaps, more accurately, the invasion), and they follow the painful path through his childhood, dissecting the family relationships that shape his development along the way. To summarise the book, We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver is written in the form of letters penned by Eva Khatchadourian to her estranged husband Franklin. You may have been (like me, for many years) avoiding reading this novel by Lionel Shriver, ducking away from discussions and avoiding reviews, having got wind of the gist of the story through the mass media. Like Shriver’s charged and incisive later novels, including So Much for That and The Post-Birthday World, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a piercing, unforgettable, and penetrating exploration of violence, family ties, and responsibility.We Need to Talk About Kevin. 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. 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. Shriver’s resonant story of a mother’s unsettling quest to understand her teenage son’s deadly violence, her own ambivalence toward motherhood, and the explosive link between them reverberates with the haunting power of high hopes shattered by dark realities.Įva 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. Who, in the end, needs to talk about Kevin? Maybe we all do.” - Boston GlobeĪcclaimed author Lionel Shriver's gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry

Talk about kevin book