Buy used: $9.16
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime
FREE delivery Friday, February 2 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35. Order within 9 hrs 27 mins
Used: Good | Details
Sold by Martistore
Condition: Used: Good
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

We Need to Talk About Kevin Hardcover – International Edition, March 25, 2003

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 11,142 ratings


Books with Buzz
Discover the latest buzz-worthy books, from mysteries and romance to humor and nonfiction. Explore more
Popular Highlights in this book

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

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
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 11,142 ratings

Important information

To report an issue with this product or seller, click here.

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

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.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
11,142 global ratings
Different cover than in the picture
4 Stars
Different cover than in the picture
I know I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I really liked the the red and blue cover with Ezra Miller and Tilda Swinton on it. I really liked the movie and it reminded me of the cinematography. Maybe it’s because I’m not a big book reader, I’m more of a movie person haha. Anyway the book itself was in good shape, a small rip in the back but that’s fine, it’s used and a paperback. I received a cover that looks like this. I also appreciate it was the unabridged version :)
Thank you for your feedback
Sorry, there was an error
Sorry we couldn't load the review

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2013
37 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2019
37 people found this helpful
Report

Top reviews from other countries

Love it
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book
Reviewed in Canada on June 19, 2023
Hellin Robinson
5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping
Reviewed in Belgium on October 17, 2023
Mags
5.0 out of 5 stars A disturbing read that raises more questions than it answers
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 15, 2023
2 people found this helpful
Report
Ishika
5.0 out of 5 stars Quality is good
Reviewed in India on October 4, 2023
Customer image
Ishika
5.0 out of 5 stars Quality is good
Reviewed in India on October 4, 2023
Just the cover is different.
Images in this review
Customer image
Customer image
Victoria42
5.0 out of 5 stars Unforgetable..
Reviewed in Spain on July 22, 2022