We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Disturbing book about family-life in suburbia in the 1990es. Lionel Shriver has written a powerful book about Eva, her husband Franklin and their son Kevin. The book is made out of a number of Eva's letters to her estranged husband, following her visits to the prison where her son Kevin has been after killing seven classmates, a teacher and a cafeteria-worker in on of those school-shootings we all know about, mostly from the Columbine-massacre. I don't know, but maybe the Columbine-massacre was the inspiration for this book.

Eva and Franklin are New York WASPs in their mid-thirties, when they decide to try making a baby and becoming a real family, moving from TriBeCa to the 'burbs, bringing up their son, Kevin. Kevin is not like other children - or should I say, that seen through the eyes of his mother, he is not like other children, while his father seems to think that whatever Kevin does, its normal and healthy? The voice of the book belongs to Eva, mainly, and I shuddered through parts of the book. Clearly, Eva did not like her son, and she definitely did not understand him. But I shuddered even more when I read about Franklin's reactions, and found him a weak idiot through a large part of the book. But then again, the letters are from Eva to Franklin, not the other way round, so we can only take Eva's words for whatever she claims went wrong through Kevin's childhood and adolescence. It is not that she is not taking the blame, though, because she is. I still would have liked to hear Franklin's voice as well, and I grew a little tired with Eva's voice, and actually also grew a little tired with her taking much of the blame. I would also have liked some kind of explanation of why Kevin became a killer, although I guess the explanation is what I have just read in this book which has more than 450 pages.

I would love to discuss much more about this book, as there are many interesting topics to discuss, but I am afraid it would mean spoilers, so for now I will just say, that if you haven't read it, do it now. Great book, but scary and disturbing.