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We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel (Hardcover)

~ Lionel Shriver (Author) "It's still difficult for me to venture into public..." (more)
Key Phrases: nyeh nyeh, New York, Mary Woolford, Miss Fabricant (more...)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (233 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A number of fictional attempts have been made to portray what might lead a teenager to kill a number of schoolmates or teachers, Columbine style, but Shriver's is the most triumphantly accomplished by far. A gifted journalist as well as the author of seven novels, she brings to her story a keen understanding of the intricacies of marital and parental relationships as well as a narrative pace that is both compelling and thoughtful. Eva Khatchadourian is a smart, skeptical New Yorker whose impulsive marriage to Franklin, a much more conventional person, bears fruit, to her surprise and confessed disquiet, in baby Kevin. From the start Eva is ambivalent about him, never sure if she really wanted a child, and he is balefully hostile toward her; only good-old-boy Franklin, hoping for the best, manages to overlook his son's faults as he grows older, a largely silent, cynical, often malevolent child. The later birth of a sister who is his opposite in every way, deeply affectionate and fragile, does nothing to help, and Eva always suspects his role in an accident that befalls little Celia. The narrative, which leads with quickening and horrifying inevitability to the moment when Kevin massacres seven of his schoolmates and a teacher at his upstate New York high school, is told as a series of letters from Eva to an apparently estranged Franklin, after Kevin has been put in a prison for juvenile offenders. This seems a gimmicky way to tell the story, but is in fact surprisingly effective in its picture of an affectionate couple who are poles apart, and enables Shriver to pull off a huge and crushing shock far into her tale. It's a harrowing, psychologically astute, sometimes even darkly humorous novel, with a clear-eyed, hard-won ending and a tough-minded sense of the difficult, often painful human enterprise.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In a series of brutally introspective missives to her husband, Franklin, from whom she is separated, Eva tries to come to grips with the fact that their 17-year-old son, Kevin, has killed seven students and two adults... Guiltily she recalls how, as a successful writer, she was terrified of having a child. Was it for revenge, then, that from the moment of his birth Kevin was the archetypal difficult child, screaming for hours, refusing to nurse, driving away countless nannies, and intuitively learning to "divide and conquer" his parents? When their daughter, loving and patient Celia, is born, Eva feels vindicated; but as the gap between her view of Kevin as a "Machiavellian miscreant" and Franklin's efforts to explain away their son's aberrant behavior grows wider, they find themselves facing divorce. In crisply crafted sentences that cut to the bone of her feelings about motherhood, career, family, and what it is about American culture that produces child killers, Shriver yanks the reader back and forth between blame and empathy, retribution and forgiveness. Never letting up on the tension, Shriver ensures that, like Eva, the reader grapples with unhealed wounds. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Counterpoint; Export Ed edition (April 15, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1582432678
  • ISBN-13: 978-1582432670
  • Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (233 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #94,949 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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More About the Author

Lionel Shriver
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› Visit Amazon's Lionel Shriver Page
Front Cover | Front Flap | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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It's still difficult for me to venture into public. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
nyeh nyeh
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New York, Mary Woolford, Miss Fabricant, United States, Dana Rocco, Laura Woolford, Gladstone High, Miss Pagorski, Lenny Pugh, Kevin Khatchadourian, Palisades Parade, Vicki Pagorski, Jack Marlin, Joshua Lukronsky, Luke Woodham, Michael Carneal, New Jersey, School Shootings, Thelma Corbitt, Denny Corbitt, Hudson House, Loretta Greenleaf, Nyack Hospital, Robin Hood, Soweto Washington
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Customer Reviews

233 Reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars (233 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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119 of 125 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant And Sensitive Psychological Study- A Great Novel, November 28, 2004
"We Need To Talk About Kevin" is a disquieting, provocative, and brilliantly written novel about a mother, desperately attempting to understand why her son, 15-year-old Kevin, brutally, with premeditation, murdered seven of his fellow classmates, a cafeteria worker and his English teacher in a Columbine-style school massacre. There have been nationwide discussions on the cause of events like these - especially during the 1990s when it seemed like school shootings ran rampant throughout the US. In Pearl, Paducah, Springfield, Littleton, seemingly normal kids, kids who had almost everything a child could want, became terribly derailed. Some argue that the proliferation of and easy access to guns is the cause; others that the excess of violence in movies, TV programs and video games induce violent behavior in children and adolescents. The one question almost everyone seems to have in common is, "What were these murderous kids' parents like?" "Didn't they recognize symptoms of violence in their own children?"

Eva Khatchadourian, Kevin's bereft mother, narrates this novel through a series of compelling letters to her estranged husband, Franklin. She examines her son's life, from conception to his terrible act of violence, trying to understand the why of it. What becomes clear early on is that Eva tortures herself with blame. She is guilt-ridden that her shortcomings as a parent might have caused Kevin's evil act, his violent behavior, his very nature. She must have failed, she must have been deficient as a mother, for her boy to commit such a chilling crime. She also considers that neither nature nor nurture are solely responsible for shaping a child's character. Her honest, introspective correspondence to her beloved husband causes the reader to consider that some children just might be born bad. How and when are psychopaths created? The reader is pulled back and forth between empathy and blame, anger and grief, and perhaps, ultimately to forgiveness.

Through Eva's perspective we watch a story unfold. A happy, almost idyllic marriage to Franklin; a brilliant career in a business which she, herself, created; her ambivalent feelings when she became pregnant, an event which interfered with her career; the indifference she felt when she held her son for the first time; Kevin's difficult infancy - he refused his mother's milk and didn't like to be held by her; his total manipulation of his father, who believed Kevin could do no wrong, putting a permanent strain on the marriage; Kevin's lack of empathy and cruel streak, which he blatantly flaunted in front of his mother and hid from his Dad; and Eva's fear that her dislike for her son, which she went overboard to conceal, would damage him - further escalating his already violent nature.

"We Need To Talk About Kevin" examines how a heinous event can impact a town, a marriage, a family and an individual. It also causes the reader to reflect on the concept of unconditional love. Lionel Shriver's clear, crisply crafted prose builds tension throughout her novel, ultimately leading to a stunning conclusion. Her narrative is almost perfectly paced. This is an extraordinary psychological study that gripped me, riveted me, from the first page to the last. And the author ably portrays the complexity and the horror of the act and the consequences. I was seriously left breathless and horribly saddened after finishing the book. This is most definitely not an "up" novel or a light read. However, it may be my favorite book of 2004 and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I have purchased 2 more of Ms. Shriver's novels as a result of reading this one.
JANA
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80 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Terrifying and brilliant, April 16, 2003
This is one of the most chilling and compulsively readable books Ive opened in a long time. As you read Eva Khatchadourians letters to her estranged husband you think this is what it must be like for parents whose child has just murdered classmates and a popular teacher.

As Eva reveals in her letters, she knew something was wrong with Kevin from the moment of his birth when he turned away from her breast snarling and screaming. The anger does not wane, even though outwardly he was a passive, disinterested child. She blames her own mixed feelings toward him, but her beloved husband Franklin fiercely defends the boy whenever she asks why babysitters never come back for a second time and other families go great lengths to keep Kevin away from their own children. And Eva doesnt like him. No matter how hard she tries--and she does try very hard, moving to the suburbs, staying home, none of which she wants to doshe does not like her son.

Since you know from the beginning that Kevin is in juvenile prison for killing his classmates, you might think that the suspense in the story will come from finding out how he planned his spree and carried it out. You would be very, very mistaken. Very late in We Need to Talk About Kevin Lionel Shriver introduces a twist that is completely unexpected and totally shocking. These are words too frequently used in describing thrillers which rarely deliver the unexpected or the shocking. Believe me, in this book, those words do not begin to describe the wallop Shriver packs in the last quarter of the novel.

I was unfamiliar with Lionel Shriver, and will (after a recovery period) look for her other novels. She digs fearlessly into the back of her characters minds and the bottoms of their hearts. Read this book.

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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Born Bad?, May 9, 2003
By A Customer
Shriver's brilliant novel explores the depth of a couple's journey into parenthood through letters written by Eva Khatchadourian to her husband. Such a limited form could prove tiresome in lesser hands, but Shriver excells by giving life to Eva in uncompromisingly full dimension, revealing her faults and virtues in full measure.
While the themes of reluctant motherhood and high school mass murder and their possible relationship are central to the plot and handled masterfully, the author has a rare gift of understanding of the inner self that literally puts the reader inside Eva's mind.
This level of insight extends to illuminate the dark side in the person of Eva's son Kevin while at the same time offering no easy explanation of what may have contributed decisively to the creation of his utterly evil persona.
There are many layers in Shriver's writing and each sentence is packed tightly with content and resonant truth. So compelling are the moment to moment revelations that one is temporarily suspended from the story. But when things really heat up in the last third of the book it becomes impossible to put it down.
One of the finest writers I've come across.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Two different books
The first book I've really gotten into as a 'page-turner' in a long while. I stayed up late last night to finish it. It seems to me though like two different books. Read more
Published 2 days ago by MSM

2.0 out of 5 stars difficult son....but clueless parents
It is a rare event for me not to finish a book--particularly when I'm facing into a long day of plane travel. Read more
Published 6 days ago by Peregrinator

3.0 out of 5 stars First half: Shriver's Cleverness At Large; second half: 'My Son, Damien Thorn'...
I've just finished reading this book -- the first 2/3rds took me several months of putting it down when *another* unnecessarily complex or obscure word jumped out... Read more
Published 1 month ago by the Fallen Angle

5.0 out of 5 stars A harrowing tale of gore, isolation, pain and imperfect redemtion
My first impression of we need to talk about Kevin was that is must be a psuedo-psychologic tale of what sort of upbringing would result in a teenage boy engaging in a... Read more
Published 2 months ago by T. Edmund Jenkin

5.0 out of 5 stars We Need to Talk about Kevin
This is a TERRIFIC book. i recall that it may have been a little slow to start but it gets going. There are many societal/parental issues touched upon making this a very... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Linda Redfern

5.0 out of 5 stars Nerve shattering
I finished WNTTAK about one hour ago and I am still trying to calm down and compose myself. What a nerve shattering novel - absolutely brilliant and compulsively readable. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Belle du Jour

1.0 out of 5 stars untransubstantiated?
I have never in my life given up on a book on the first page before. But, halfway through the first page of this book, I was already thinking it was mired in self-indulgence... Read more
Published 3 months ago by madrec

4.0 out of 5 stars We Need to Talk About Kevin
We Need to Talk About Kevin tackles the subject of school massacres, told in a series of letters by Eva, the mother of Kevin Khatchadourian, a high school boy who murders several... Read more
Published 4 months ago by P. Newhart

4.0 out of 5 stars The Origins of a School Shooter
It's one of the uncomfortable little facts of life that sometimes we don't feel the things that we're "supposed" to feel. Read more
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5.0 out of 5 stars Unique structure, unique story, unique subject
Wow. This book - structured in letters from a wife to her husband - was excellent. It was totally absorbing and I could not put it down. I enjoyed reading it. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Yolanda S. Bean

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