We Need to Talk About Kevin Book Review

We Need to Talk About Kevin is an absolutely superb novel, worthy of the highest acclaim and richly deserving of the impressive sales and many honours, including the 2005 Women's Prize for Fiction, that take come its way. The skill of the writing and relevance of its themes go far a smashing example of contemporary literature, while the taboo subject matter and escalating tension of the plot give it the quality of the best pop-fiction thrillers.

One yr and eight months after her son murdered vii of his fellow loftier school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher, Eva Katchadourian is finally ready to share her thoughts on the events that led upwards to the day she can only refer to as that Thursday. In a serial of letters to her former husband she reveals her internal ambivalence towards maternity, her struggle to intendance for the hard child and her fear and suspicion of Kevin as an boyish.

Her story is besides an argument for her conviction that something was non right with Kevin from the start and, though she did not predict his mass murder even as she drove in panic to the school that Thursday, in hindsight his path to violence may take been as hard to avoid as it was to find. It is the question that dominates the narrative and the thoughts of the reader; how much of Kevin is innate and how much of the arraign, if whatsoever, is Eva's. For though Eva's words in her letters sound convinced of Kevin'due south bad seed, her actions betray a guilty conscience.

Since Thursday, she has become adept at playing the martyr. She hasn't moved far. It is difficult for her to venture into public notwithstanding she wants to experience the ramifications of her life. Her modest duplex gets paint bombed, her groceries get vandalised only she still pays for them anyway. She struggles to become by after the costs of the civil trial. She could accept claimed her legal expenses but chose to pay her legal fees herself by selling her house and her business instead. She confesses that even small-scale annoyances brand her feel more live. Why so guilty Eva?

All the same her actions could too be interpreted as that of stubborn defiance. She went to trial against legal advice considering she was determined to exist exonerated. She bristles at the hypocrisy of blamers, finger-pointers and excuse-makers and their arrogant superiority of believing bad things shouldn't happen to them. The treatment Eva endures in her new life supports both sides of her inner contradictions; the martyr pays penance and is grateful for anything that comes her way to brand her feel alive while the other shows her defiance by non existence affected and stubbornly continuing to live.

Earlier Kevin, Eva was not simply the model of the modern independent adult female, but likewise a chip of a trailblazer; intelligent, ambitious, self-actualising with unrestrained adventurousness and was entrepreneurial likewise. She started her own business writing travel guides for budget travellers to exotic locations, simply success and money bored her and left her feeling unchallenged. She reached a point where fifty-fifty her first love, travel, no longer fulfilled her. It is within this existential crisis that she began to considering motherhood every bit a last undiscovered land.

What possessed us? Nosotros were and so happy! Why, then, did we take the pale of all nosotros had and place it all on this outrageous take a chance of having a child?

As a reviewer in the Australian put it: "[Nosotros Demand to Talk Well-nigh Kevin] addresses head-on the question that causes ache to the greatest readers of fiction these days; eye-course women: when to, or fifty-fifty why, have a child?"

Slowly, Eva'southward thoughts began filling with reasons to have a child – to accept something of issue to spend their disposable income on, a greediness for someone else to dearest after achieving the love of a partner, to avoid the nihilism of not having children and turning into center-anile adolescents or at least to kill routine and alleviate boredom. Yet she knows the arguments against are eminently practical and grounded.

The very insurmountability of the task, its very unattractiveness, was in the stop what attracted me to it.

But after a difficult childbirth, she feels zero, scarce of maternal instinct, even disappointed and cheated. Soon, the real battle between mother and son, nurture and nature, begins. His refusal to suckle, his constant crying, which magically disappears in his father's presence, leaves her feeling rejected, depressed and powerless. Right from the showtime Kevin drives a wedge between husband and wife and their vastly different experiences of parenthood. It is the first of years of Kevin'due south separate and conquer strategy which he orchestrates and so skilfully and malevolently that Franklin never believes his ain married woman'south version of events.

The troubles between mother and son evolve but persist as he grows. Kevin does not misbehave in the traditional sense. Instead he refuses to toilet railroad train, refuses to show that he can walk and talk, refuses to learn or participate or engage. It is as if he deliberately wants to deny the parental joy in taking vicarious pleasure in your child's accomplishments while likewise providing nothing that might be used against him. Nor tin he be rewarded or punished in the traditional sense. He shows no involvement in toys or books, instead he shows a dislike for everything. He seems to have no sense of shame or censor or ambition.

[It] would become a chronic conundrum: how to punish a male child with almost Zen-like indifference to whatsoever you might deny him… You lot can just punish people who are already a little bit good.

Every bit Kevin grows, the events associated with him escalate in their destructiveness and their power to disturb. But and then carefully has he played his hand that no ane just Eva suspects anything malevolent in the boy. To her husband everything can exist explained by coincidence, blow, a poor choice in friends and boys being boys. Eva has to exit herself reminders that Kevin'southward nature is not simply in her caput while her husband is increasingly defensive and repeatedly shows that he trusts their son over her.

Naturally, we must likewise consider how reliable is Eva'south narration. We are, later all, but hearing her version of events. How much is Eva rationalising and reinterpreting in light of how things ended? How much of her motivation comes from trying to convalesce guilt or exonerate herself? This plays on the readers mind peculiarly since very lilliputian from Kevin's early childhood could be chosen unusual.

As well as telling united states the story of her experiences every bit a female parent, the history of Kevin and what her life has go since Thursday, Eva also relates to the reader the experiences of her fortnightly visits to the now almost 18 year old Kevin in juvenile detention. Kevin seems to exist relishing his function of sociopath beyond redemption, but in that location is also the sense that it is simply a function, one that he may get tired of but volition be stuck with the rest of his life. Eva too senses she is playing a function; that of the female parent who stays loyal and loving no matter what, if only to convince herself.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is an absolutely superb novel, worthy of the highest acclaim and richly deserving of the impressive sales and many honours, including the 2005 Women'south Prize for fiction (the Orange Prize at the fourth dimension), that have come its way. The picture, starring Tilda Swinton as Eva and Ezra Miller equally Kevin, is also worth experiencing.

There is besides an undeniable poisonous quality to its subject affair. Though I know thousands of women must accept read this book, I don't know of whatsoever personally. The women in my life that I have suggested information technology to have said they would rather steer articulate of it.

I thoroughly enjoyed the style of this novel – written in the form of a series of letters from Eva to her husband Franklin. This gives the novel a very introspective and reflective nature which I loved. Every page is filled with provocative thoughts and sharp points made past the pensive, intelligent, Eva, who has conspicuously spent much time habitation on these weighty matters of her wedlock, her maternity and her son. This is a cognitive read but not weighty; though the reader knows the story volition atomic number 82 to Kevin'southward schoolhouse massacre, the increasingly disturbing events and the escalating tension give the novel the qualities of a thriller. It is both engrossing and provokes placidity reflection in equal measure.

Writer Lionel Shriver besides employs a certain technique that I found particularly illuminating and well-delivered. She'll let Eva, in her letters, to digress and comment on something apart from the main story until she makes her betoken. The indicate volition, of course, pertain to something she is trying to say in the story and thus illuminate information technology. There is zilch particularly innovative about this. What I liked nigh it, however, was that the transaction was two way – while the innuendo illuminates the story, the story also gives credence to the allusion, which existence larger in telescopic will therefore make the story a metaphor for something occurring in society at large without necessarily saying so explicitly.

The novel is not overtly political or sociological in commentary. Though, earlier Thursday, Eva voiced her opinions, had animated arguments with her hubby, now she can hardly intendance well-nigh the Bush v Gore election taking place as she writes and tin can hardly bring up issues of the past. The contrasting opinions of Eva and Franklin cannot be called into evidence for the eventual tragedy. Fifty-fifty guns, gun violence and the rising of the high school massacre phenomenon that coincides with the period, is only given a calorie-free bear upon.

Thematically, the novel it has more to say. In that location is the manifest unfairness of the reproductive process and parental feel between the sexes. The begetter experiences the fantasy of parenthood, the mother the reality. Eva discusses the treatment of pregnancy in culture, from Rosemary's Infant to Conflicting. Just it would be too simplistic to telephone call the novel feminist or strictly a comment on dissimilar experiences betwixt the sexes, because it also raises intra-gender issues. This is manifest in the manner Eva observes women competing with each other and judging each other over their pregnancy and childbirth experiences. The judgement Eva faces after Thursday is almost exclusively from other mothers.

The more dominant theme though is the contrast between realist and optimist perspectives. Franklin is clearly an optimist in the way he always sees the best in his son and is oblivious to the mounting evidence against this. His is the voice of blind faith, hope for the best and positive thinking of the sort Barbara Ehrenreich warns about. Eva is all too sure of the reality yet cannot predict its course, or perhaps does not want to because it leads to an outcome too horrific for any mother to consider for her child.

I merely have one pocket-sized criticism of this novel; I am left feeling unsure why Eva fell in love with Franklin to brainstorm with. Their courtship is a little outside the telescopic of the story, information technology is but touched on a little, early in the novel. Franklin and Eva are very different people and Eva admits that he is vastly dissimilar to what she would have considered her ideal partner earlier meeting him. Their differences are mostly discussed in political and philosophical terms – Franklin is more than traditionalist, conservative, patriotic; Eva is more progressive, liberal, worldly, sophisticated. Franklin came from a family that embodied the Protestant Work Ethic, taking pleasure in work and not in fine art, literature, motion picture or food. Their differences create a lot of friction in their marriage as they take very different ideas of where they see themselves in the time to come, how to raise their children, how to manage their careers.

There are little hints as to why she fell in love with Franklin – that he helped her notice her ain land, that he restored her idea of abode, destroyed during a childhood with an absent begetter and an agoraphobic mother. I would accept liked more.

There are a couple more things I desire to say about this novel, simply discussing them will incur some spoilers. So consider yourself warned if you lot read on.

I take been thinking a lot recently virtually how an writer can employ the plot to solve an issue of the format. Mister Pip recently brought this to my mind. Mister Pip is written from the indicate of view of a 14 yr one-time daughter, Matilda, who does not have a lot of education. Nonetheless in the novel she uses words and ideas that are clearly beyond what we would wait of the graphic symbol. Author Lloyd Jones solves this in the end by making the educated, adult Matilda the real storyteller.

I thought of this a lot after reading Kevin because, while reading it, I felt compromises were being made between the form, of messages from Eva to Franklin, and the need to also tell the story to the reader. There will be passages where y'all will wonder why Eva is telling Franklin this, does Franklin no already know this. But like Mister Pip, this apparent discrepancy comes together in the end. It is just a little insight into the craft that yous tin't help but reflect on afterwards reading these books.

Finally, I thought the novel ended superbly. You tin can translate the novel as Eva'due south journey to respond the two questions that plague her – why did she have a kid? Why did Kevin exercise information technology? When she puts the latter to her son, soon to turn eighteen and enter prison proper, he gives her the best possible answer to both.

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Source: https://weneedtotalkaboutbooks.com/2016/05/01/book-review-we-need-to-talk-about-kevin/