'We Need to Talk About Kevin' by Lionel Shriver

I have a habit of doing certain things in the wrong order - I curl my eyelashes after applying mascara, I eat cereal after lunchtime and, occasionally, I read the book only after watching the movie. Along with American Psycho, Fight Club and, er, Twilight, this is one of those occasions. I first watched the film adaptation of We Need to Talk About Kevin about two weeks ago and, more than a little bit intrigued, I quickly decided to pick up the novel itself. First published in 2003, We Need to Talk About Kevin is American author Lionel Shriver’s seventh novel, a mutable thriller which details a fictional high school massacre perpetrated by a troubled middle class teenager named Kevin Khatchadourian. It is told in the first person by the killer’s mother, Eva Khatchadourian, as a series of long letters written to her seemingly estranged husband Franklin. The novel won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005, just several years after being rejected by no fewer than thirty publishers, and it has since gone on to sell more than one million copies. So, let’s talk about We Need to Talk About Kevin…sorry…

At first glance, We Need to Talk About Kevin is primarily a book about motherhood. But far from painting a rosy picture of the intangible bond that is said to form as soon as a mother holds her newborn child, Shriver instead takes a daunting and some might say disturbing approach to writing about motherhood: what if this bond and all of these supposedly innate instincts do not actually exist? Now I have absolutely no idea what it is like to be a mother, but I imagine it must involve a certain measure of self-sacrifice, as narrator Eva Khatchadourian would no doubt agree. Towards the beginning of the novel Eva’s letters to her husband consist mainly of reflections on her old child-rearing anxieties; it becomes clear fairly early on that Eva loved her life as an intrepid explorer and had scant interest in the staid suburban lifestyle that would eventually become her reality. Ambitious and career-minded, Eva quietly abhors the idea of having children, however her husband Franklin, an affable ‘all-American’ type with blonde hair and broad shoulders, has other ideas. When baby Kevin is born Eva is immediately seized by what she is assured is postnatal depression, but what we later learn is something of an entirely different magnitude.

On closer inspection, however, We Need to Talk About Kevin proves to be a work of even greater depth. While Kevin himself is something of a puzzle, for Shriver deliberately denies us the luxury of knowing exactly why Kevin did what he did, Eva is frank and engaging and, although deliberately quite an unreliable narrator, she is ultimately very sympathetic. Kevin’s murderous rampage (picture Columbine with a crossbow) cannot, much like its real-life precursors, be explained away easily. Was he born evil? Did Eva condition him to be evil? Much like Columbine, the last book I reviewed on here, there are no easy answers. As regards Kevin himself, Shriver cleverly sidesteps any of the 'bad boy’ conventions typically ascribed to school shooters and instead presents us with a young man who seems inherently and irrevocably malevolent.

What surprised me most about We Need to Talk About Kevin is just how good the writing itself is. I have a tendency to approach bestsellers with caution but in this case I had no cause to - Lionel Shriver is, quite simply, a phenomenal writer. Although it is written in the epistolary form, We Need to Talk About Kevin reads a lot more like a psychological thriller, one that is damned difficult to put down. Furthermore, it boasts of one of the best denouements you could ever hope to read. Brave, unflinching, and above all, compelling, this really is an extraordinary novel. Lynne Ramsay’s film adaptation, starring Tilda Swinton as Eva and Ezra Miller as Kevin, is brilliant also.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in March 2012.