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We Need to Talk About Kevin Hardcover – International Edition, March 25, 2003
Eva never really wanted to be a mother. And certainly not the mother of a boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much–adored teacher in a school shooting two days before his sixteenth birthday.
Neither nature nor nurture exclusively shapes a child's character. But Eva was always uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood. Did her internalized dislike for her own son shape him into the killer he’s become? How much is her fault?
Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with Kevin’s horrific rampage, all in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin.
A piercing, unforgettable, and penetrating exploration of violence and responsibility, a book that the Boston Globe describes as “impossible to put down,” is a stunning examination of how tragedy affects a town, a marriage, and a family.
- Print length416 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCounterpoint
- Publication dateMarch 25, 2003
- Dimensions6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-109781582432670
- ISBN-13978-1582432670
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Editorial Reviews
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About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
We Need to Talk about Kevin
By Lionel ShriverCounterpoint Press
Copyright © 2003 Lionel ShriverAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9781582432670
November 8, 2000
Dear Franklin,
I'm unsure why one trifling incident this afternoon has moved me to writeto you. But since we've been separated, I may most miss coming home todeliver the narrative curiosities of my day, the way a cat might lay mice atyour feet: the small, humble offerings that couples proffer after foraging inseparate backyards. Were you still installed in my kitchen, slatheringcrunchy peanut butter on Branola though it was almost time for dinner, I'dno sooner have put down the bags, one leaking a clear viscous drool, thanthis little story would come tumbling out, even before I chided that we'rehaving pasta tonight so would you please not eat that whole sandwich.
In the early days, of course, my tales were exotic imports, from Lisbon,from Katmandu. But no one wants to hear stories from abroad, really, and Icould detect from your telltale politeness that you privately preferred anecdotaltrinkets from closer to home: an eccentric encounter with a toll collectoron the George Washington Bridge, say. Marvels from the mundanehelped to ratify your view that all my foreign travel was a kind of cheating.My souvenirs -- a packet of slightly stale Belgian waffles, the British expressionfor "piffle" (codswallop!) -- were artificially imbued with magic by meredint of distance. Like those baubles the Japanese exchange -- in a box in abag, in a box in a bag -- the sheen on my offerings from far afield was allpackaging. What a more considerable achievement, to root around in theuntransubstantiated rubbish of plain old New York state and scrounge amoment of piquancy from a trip to the Nyack Grand Union.
Which is just where my story takes place. I seem finally to be learningwhat you were always trying to teach me, that my own country is as exoticand even as perilous as Algeria. I was in the dairy aisle and didn't needmuch; I wouldn't. I never eat pasta these days, without you to dispatchmost of the bowl. I do miss your gusto.
It's still difficult for me to venture into public. You would think, in acountry that so famously has "no sense of history," as Europeans claim,that I might cash in on America's famous amnesia. No such luck. No onein this "community" shows any signs of forgetting, after a year and eightmonths -- to the day. So I have to steel myself when provisions run low.Oh, for the clerks at the 7-Eleven on Hopewell Street my novelty hasworn off, and I can pick up a quart of milk without glares. But our regularGrand Union remains a gauntlet.
I always feel furtive there. To compensate, I force my back straight, myshoulders square. I see now what they mean by "holding your head high,"and I am sometimes surprised by how much interior transformation aramrod posture can afford. When I stand physically proud, I feel a smallmeasure less mortified.
Debating medium eggs or large, I glanced toward the yogurts. A fewfeet away, a fellow shopper's frazzled black hair went white at the roots fora good inch, while its curl held only at the ends: an old permanent grownout. Her lavender top and matching skirt may have once been stylish, butnow the blouse bound under the arms and the peplum served to emphasizeheavy hips. The outfit needed pressing, and the padded shouldersbore the faint stripe of fading from a wire hanger. Something from thenether regions of the closet, I concluded, what you reach for when everythingelse is filthy or on the floor. As the woman's head tilted toward theprocessed cheese, I caught the crease of a double chin.
Don't try to guess; you'd never recognize her from that portrait. Shewas once so neurotically svelte, sharply cornered, and glossy as if commerciallygift wrapped. Though it may be more romantic to picture thebereaved as gaunt, I imagine you can grieve as efficiently with chocolatesas with tap water. Besides, there are women who keep themselves sleek andsmartly turned out less to please a spouse than to keep up with a daughter,and, thanks to us, she lacks that incentive these days.
It was Mary Woolford. I'm not proud of this, but I couldn't face her.I reeled. My hands went clammy as I fumbled with the carton, checkingthat the eggs were whole. I rearranged my features into those of a shopperwho had just remembered something in the next aisle over and managedto place the eggs on the child-seat without turning. Scuttling off on this pretense of mission, I left the cart behind, because the wheels squeaked. Icaught my breath in soup.
I should have been prepared, and often am -- girded, guarded, often tono purpose as it turns out. But I can't clank out the door in full armorto run every silly errand, and besides, how can Mary harm me now? Shehas tried her damnedest; she's taken me to court. Still, I could not tamemy heartbeat, nor return to dairy right away, even once I realized that I'dleft that embroidered bag from Egypt, with my wallet, in the cart.
Which is the only reason I didn't abandon the Grand Union altogether.I eventually had to skulk back to my bag, and so I meditated onCampbell's asparagus and cheese, thinking aimlessly how Warhol would beappalled by the redesign.
By the time I crept back the coast was clear, and I swept up my cart,abruptly the busy professional woman who must make quick work of domesticchores. A familiar role, you would think. Yet it's been so long since Ithought of myself that way that I felt sure the folks ahead of me at checkoutmust have pegged my impatience not as the imperiousness of the secondearnerfor whom time is money, but as the moist, urgent panic of a fugitive ...
Continues...
Excerpted from We Need to Talk about Kevinby Lionel Shriver Copyright © 2003 by Lionel Shriver. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- ASIN : 1582432678
- Publisher : Counterpoint; First Edition (March 25, 2003)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 416 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781582432670
- ISBN-13 : 978-1582432670
- Item Weight : 1.57 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,137,825 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #49,615 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #56,184 in American Literature (Books)
- #221,790 in Genre Literature & Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

Lionel Shriver is a novelist whose previous books include Orange Prize–winner We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Post-Birthday World, A Perfectly Good Family, Game Control, Double Fault, The Female of the Species, Checker and the Derailleurs, and Ordinary Decent Criminals.
She is widely published as a journalist, writing features, columns, op-eds, and book reviews for the Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Economist, Marie Claire, and many other publications.
She is frequently interviewed on television, radio, and in print media. She lives in London and Brooklyn, NY.
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Most readers will agree that one of the first 2 options will provide the who-is-to-blame answer in this story, and this is of course the age-old nature vs. nurture debate. Within the first page, I couldn't stand the narrator, Kevin's mother. This almost stopped me from continuing, as the first 100 or so pages are nothing but snotty, pretentious drivel. Eva hates her fellow human beings, looks down on everyone, makes absolutely horrid observations about even her ex-husband who she claims to still love, and uses words that are too big and sentences that are too long. It's so over-the-top that I assumed this was a device. The only other conclusion would be that the author is also a pretentious snob but I do not think this is the case.
Just because you don't care for her, you can't discount her observations. As the reader, you have to attempt to sort out the facts from her interpretation of the facts. For example, Kevin didn't talk until he was 3. When he did start speaking, he spoke in full sentences. Regardless of the interpretation as to why (was he a perfectionist? was he devious? was he withholding?) the point is he knew how to do something that he didn't let on to. Kevin forced his mother to change his diapers until he was 6! And yes, his intentions are clear as day to me though perhaps others may interpret it differently. Kevin won't give people what they want. He sneaks in eating so that he is not hungry at mealtime. Everything his mother needs in the way of results, feedback, or even feeling like she's done her motherly job, he denies her.
He progresses to being a killjoy. Anything that anyone else delights in, he destroys. Only once does he get caught (prior to the big day), water pistol in hand destroying his mother's beloved maps. Otherwise, bad things just happen to those around him. He is adept at finding peoples' weaknesses and nursing them: turning a pretty girl scarily anorexic, helping a child with severe psoriasis scratch her face bloody, ruining a teacher's career with sexual abuse allegations, and so much more. He is interested in computer viruses because they tear down other people's hard work. There are a couple of sub-thematic diatribes in the book about how there is nothing left in life to create, the only possibility left is to destroy. Most notably, the classmates that he singles out for death are those who irritated him, and how did they irritate him? By having interests. That is it. Folks that are interested in things bother him. Even as a child, he wasn't interested in doing a darn thing. It's like he never outgrew the "no" phase.
Even when he's not being blatantly evil, Kevin seems to enjoy making people feel uncomfortable. In complete opposition to the my-pants-are-falling-off-of-me trend, he wears his clothes too tight. I felt embarrassed just reading the descriptions of pants not quite zipping up and shirts stretched too tight across the nipples. I suspect that in addition to thrilling in making teachers and schoolmates uncomfortable, he is also trying to cast doubts about his wealthy family.
There is one omission to the list of possible explanations for the massacre and that is mental health. As a possibility, it is neither presented nor eliminated. I believe that the author is presenting Kevin as a sane individual, but what if he did have some form of mental illness? Kevin does confess to depression and asks for a Prozac subscription but you feel that he is only building a plausible excuse of being medicated. The narrator does seem to be building a case that her son was very deliberate and in control of all of his choices and planning, but I'm not sure if that is the same as clinical sanity. Perhaps it is.
Eva knows that her son is very much like her. But clearly he is the worse of the 2 devils because she still wants his what? love? approval? cooperation? and he needs nothing from her except maybe an audience and another person to toy with. By her own admissions, in the courtroom she is bored, manipulative, and uncooperative. I don't think she feels victimized and if anything, she just sees this as an inconvenient fall from grace. I wonder if she regrets the deaths of Kevin's classmates. In her letters to her ex-husband, I sense a competition (only on her part as it is a one-way dialogue) that at least she was "on" to Kevin and and least he was "real" with her. This, again, makes her unlikeable to me as her thoughts and emotions are inappropriate and misplaced. Why be in a contest with the ex-husband as to who was the favorite parent of a killer? Where is the regret? What is she doing to try to make amends to society? Does she completely disassociate herself? What human being wouldn't at least feel a little badly about a mass murder even if it wasn't their fault?
So as to the nature vs nurture question, here is what I think: it's a terrible child with a terrible mother. He came out of her womb uncooperative, manipulative, and destructive. But his mother possesses at least the first 2 characteristics, so is he the genetically cranked-up version of her?
Just when you really can't stand the narrator, the author slightly redeems her but breaks your heart with the introduction of a sister for Kevin. Docile, obedient, "doormat" Celia is the apple of her mother's eye. If the author hadn't introduced a second, sweet, pliant, and appreciative child you may wonder if indeed Kevin is so rotten because his mother is so cold. But Celia helps to endorse the theory that Kevin is just a bad seed. With dread in your stomach, you realize that Kevin will destroy that which gives someone else pleasure, and his sister gives his mother pleasure. He maims her permanently, and the quiet accepting manner of this little girl, well, it just puts me beside myself.
Confession: I've been writing this review as I'm reading the book. The author just dropped such a bombshell that I should go back and edit my reactions to Kevin's mother but I will leave them as testimony to the fact that the author does play with your emotions brilliantly. Now I see that she is not un-remorseful, she is shell-shocked. She has been stripped of everything that meant anything to her. The unfolding of this scene, the scene in which she discovers her 2 loved ones dead, stands in stark contrast to her factual reporting on the school massacre and its victims. As the reader, you are crushed by her discovery and it truly unfolds in horrific, dreadful slow motion. Now I see that when it comes to the school massacre, she simply has no emotion left and resents having to answer for any responsibility in a courtroom when she is in the same position as the plaintiffs; she is in a position of complete and utter loss.
I also see now that when she appears to be talking down to her husband, she is doing it in a loving, honest, and complete way. I understand and feel the same, you should not glorify the dead, true love means remembering all the flaws too. I imagined her writing condescending but unsent letters to an ex-husband who had custody over their daughter which of course is not true. I could be wrong but I think she may even feel complicit in their murders because Kevin is so clearly her child. Her child, who has saved the worst punishment for her: to be left alive and living in the aftermath of his destruction. Does she visit her son in jail because she feels complicit or because he is all she has left of her former life? Maybe both.
I imagine that in writing letters to her husband she herself is trying to understand how this all happened. Just as Kevin confesses at the end that he "doesn't know" anymore why he did it, she doesn't know if she is at fault. She seems to want to think that if she hadn't disliked her son or had been more defensive of him perhaps matters would have turned out differently. I doubt that, given that the father who always defended his son is portrayed as a dupe and ends up dead. She concludes her final letter with this statement: "I am too exhausted and too confused and too lonely to keep fighting, and if only out of desperation or even laziness I love my son. He has five grim years left to serve in an adult penitentiary, and I cannot vouch for what will walk out the other side. But in the meantime, there is a second bedroom in my serviceable apartment. The bedspread is plain. A copy of "Robin Hood" lied on the bookshelf. And the sheets are clean."
My aching heart and saddened mind strongly recommend this book as an honest and complicated answer to one of the most difficult questions we currently face. And that answer could very well be "We don't know."
[A side note about the movie: It is almost the common wisdom that movies are never as good as the books upon which they are based, but this movie gives the lie to that inasmuch as it was gripping and very faithful to the book, managing to cut very little out and to portray the main characters as the author had intended.]
The titular Kevin is a bad kid. He is a son single-mindedly intent - for whatever reason - on destroying his mother and everything (everything!) meaningful in her life. The bulk of the book is spent cataloging the evil deeds perpetrated by this miscreant from the minute he leaves the womb until the horrific climax. (The school violence that Kevin carries out is really only the penultimate climax, and is frequently alluded to as the story unfolds, so to speak of it is not really a “spoiler.” There is, however, an even more climactic climax, if there can be such a thing, which I won’t divulge and which will come as a shock to anyone who did not as I did view the movie first.)
The basis for my favorable assessment of this book is twofold: The style in which the book is written and the theme(s) tackled.
First, a word about the writing style. Most striking (although it has surely been done before) is that the story is told via the format of letters which the main character writes to her now out-of-the-picture husband. Initially I wasn’t sure if I cared too much for this mechanism, finding it extremely unrealistic, but the ending of the story (which, again, I won’t give away) makes one realize why it was undertaken.
Several reviews of the book that I’ve read have faulted the author for being too wordy and verbose, and using too many fifty-cent words. I tend to agree with that. The author all too often engages in feats of linguistic complexity that will have you reading and re-reading the same sentence over and over to try to parse out exactly what idea or sentiment she is trying to convey, and that can be somewhat off-putting. Nevertheless, this is one talented and intelligent writer.
Over and above the writing style (which, although a bit too highfaluting, is yet quite notable), the book tackles two parallel themes, both difficult subjects. The first – and most obvious – theme is that of school violence, certainly a hot topic in today’s violence drenched society. The book liberally references school shootings that have, tragically, taken place all over the country in recent years.
But the other theme – which seems to take a back seat but shouldn't – is the one that I found the more compelling. It is the theme of familial dysfunction, specifically maternal aloofness and lack of maternal love.
The way I see it, “Kevin” kind of presents a chicken-and-egg conundrum: Is Kevin bad because his mother never bonded with and loved him, or was Eva never able to bond with and love her son because Kevin was inherently bad?
I think this is an almost taboo subject – the very possibility that a mother might dislike her own progeny – and I applaud the author for daring to tackle it, albeit in a fictional account.
The four main characters in this story are expertly and painstakingly sketched.
Eva Khatchadourian is our protagonist inasmuch as the story, ultimately, is about how the terrible events of the story impact her life. It is also through Eva’s first-person voice that this woebegone tale is told. Eva is the quintessential working woman. She is very much in love with her husband Franklin but let there be no doubt: She is a working girl. She owns her own highly lucrative travel agency and travels the world over in pursuit of her career. Somewhere along the line, Eva and Franklin decide – for reasons that are not entirely rock-solid – to have a child. The bottom line is that Eva is highly conflicted about having this child – even though this is very much a voluntary pregnancy – and that ambivalence will exact an ugly price.
Then we have Franklin, her husband. Franklin is an affable enough fellow, but utterly and completely clueless, guilty of stick-your-head-in-the sand ostrich-like denial in the face of the cascading evil perpetrated by his flesh-and-blood on a regular basis.
Then there is sweet, vulnerable, trusting Celia, the perfect counter-point to Kevin, and the apple of her mother’s eye.
And then of course there is Kevin. Kevin is, quite simply, evil incarnate. Kevin is the antagonist to Eva’s protagonist, and what an antagonist he is! As aforesaid, Kevin is a bad kid from the start. Incorrigible seems like a quaint term, implying “naughtiness,” but Kevin is truly incorrigible. In infancy (and indeed well past toddlerhood), he acts out his spite and malice through his toilet-training habits; by the time he is a teenager, he is exacting his malevolence through physical harm to his angelic little sister. ....And worse, as we come to see.
Basically, We Need to Talk about Kevin is about how this boy wreaks havoc for his mother. Well, actually, not just his mother, but somehow Eva always ends up taking the brunt of his evil-doing. Can the sins of the son be visited upon the mother? Many of the reviews I’ve read before embarking on my own describe Eva as unlikeable. In her very own words (p. 350) Eva is "cold, suspicious, resentful, accusatory, and aloof" and an “ice queen.” I personally felt sorry for her, however, not only for the way her life falls apart at the end, but even earlier than that, for the reason that she is like a voice crying out in the wilderness. In the face of her own husband’s – the boy’s father! - failure to see the truth of what is happening right in front of him, Eva is the only one with eyes to see, the only sane force among the insane. How can a figure like this not be at least somewhat sympathetic?
This book starts out slowly but snowballs toward its ineffable climax with ever more chilling incidents. (I catch myself wondering if the book should be classified as “horror” in the vein of “The Bad Seed” or “Damian,” but it deals with themes of a more intellectual nature than sheer horror.) At the book’s conclusion Eva is bereft of everything that mattered in her life. Everything. When I finished this book I was left with the thought in my head that it can be seen as a cautionary tale: Raising a child is risky business, the stakes are potentially high, and perhaps not everyone is suited for parenthood, and hence parenthood is something that should not be entered into lightly. Again, a bold subject for this brave author to tackle.
This book has left an indelible impression on me. It is a story I won't soon forget. I would encourage any reader burdened by the lofty language or the initially slow pace of this book to persevere. It is no doubt a depressing tale but one offering much food for thought. I think this would make an excellent book club selection as it not only presents fascinating characterizations but also raises many issues worthy of discussion.
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