We Need To Talk About Kevin

If you are reading "We Need To Talk About Kevin" I would suggest reading it during the daytime. No, I am not talking about a Stephen King thriller or a Fear Street paperback. Lionel Shriver's spine chilling book is set very much in the modern world and takes flight from the various college shootings that wrecked America during a certain period. Written in the form of letters to a husband, Shriver's character Eva, describes the turmoils that surround Kevin from the time before his birth to the day he commits an act that would break not just a mother but people around the world. That "Thursday" Kevin commences an act of killing that chills the world.

Shriver's novel, which won the Orange Prize for fiction, is a cold look at motherhood and its precepts. It attacks the conventionalities of being a mother - for example, a mother is supposed to love her child because its her child. But here she describes the myriad emotions that Eva goes through when her child is born and how she struggles to come to terms with the feelings of motherhood. She is not a maternally inclined person by nature. Before you get the idea that poor baby Kevin is thrust into the hands of a devil of a mother, Shriver dispels the notion by showing how he is equally a very different baby. Kevin behaves like a schizophrenic from babyhood but his motions are oblivious to his doting father.

Excerpt - "Subsequent to a particular day in January, the moment I led Kevin by the hand into the classroom, a little girl with Shirley Temple curls began to cry, and her wailing worsened until at some point in February she never came back. Another boy, aggressive and rambunctious in September, one of those biffy sorts always boxing your leg and pushing other kids in the sandbox, suddenly became silent and inward, developing at once a severe case of asthma and an inexplicable terror of the coat closet, within five feet of which he would begin to wheeze. What did that have to do with Kevin? I couldn't say; perhaps nothing."

Pick up this book and have a sleepless night. Guaranteed.

Resources:

Wiki has a neat description of each of the characters.

The BBC has this page dedicated to the discussion of the book.