Review - We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Book Summary from Amazon


The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry.

Eva never really wanted to be a mother—and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.


My Review - 4 Great to the last Drop

This is the hardest book I have ever read.  Brutal, intense, shocking, I feel like the blood has slowly been taken out of my body and I was left to die in my thoughts. 

The intro quote is:  A child needs your love most when he deserves it least.  - Erma Bombeck

I don't know how Kevin's parents loved him, what a parental struggle to deal with Kevin. 

About 30% in I started to have the need to hear from Franklin, the father.  I was enjoying Eva's letters but wanted more.  Eva wrote Franklin often within a 2 year time gap, sometimes daily, weekly or monthly, this is how the story was unfolded.  So many things I couldn't believe she never told Franklin, how did they live together and at times be happy without real communication and harmony.

Eva's letters takes you on a mysterious journey, makes you think, takes you down the judgement alley, makes you want to scream, criticize, say what if, why don't they, why didn't they.  What really drew me in by half way was that Kevin had so many characteristics of a serial killer to be and Eva wasn't fearful enough to get him help.  Ironically Franklin thought Eva should go to a shrink, unbelievable.  To be able to see the signs and follow the ultimate destruction was phenomenal, this is what glued me to the pages.  I don't know how Eva didn't disown Kevin but Franklin was not about to give up on their son and put a label on him, he just loved and supported him to a fault.  I struggled with Eva and Kevin competing with each other, very complicated mother and son relationship. 

The main fault I have with this novel is the excessive use of unknown words, I didn't understand why this was necessary but it was from beginning to end, so many new words to learn I couldn't enjoy learning one or two.

What I loved about the book is even though you know something is going to happen, you know the end result, there suspenseful elements, you may figure them out, but the reality still hits you like a ton of bricks.  This was executed to perfection.

This is a very hard book to get through but it just gets better.  I started to think this was a bad choice initially but I am so glad I stuck to it, what an unbelievable, amazing, mysterious, thought provoking book.

There will be a discussion here at Tea Time with Marce tomorrow.  Come over, join in, link your review and lets discuss, vent, debate and have it out.  I highly recommend you only read the discussion posts if you have read the book or have no intentions to read it, it will be full of SPOILERS.