We Need to Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

The stories of students going on a shooting spree in their high schools are as regular as the seasons these days. As are the books and films that have been made about the topic. Most are sensational fare, focussing on the victims' stories and society's involvement and the what-went-wrong of it all.

Lionel Shriver takes a slightly different approach but giving the stage over to the mother of the shooter, Eva. Also, this is not written in the 'regular' novel style, but rather in letters that Eva addresses to her husband, Franklin.

Eva is in no way the toting mother that adores her firstborn son. She is always aware that she is a failure as a mother. The boy was born more as a social experiment than the actual desire for children. Little Kevin is a mean and calculating child from the very beginning, pestering his mother and a string of baby sitters, while at the same time playing perfect son to his father, running to great him whenever he comes home from work.

Franklin, then, not having seen any other side to his little boy, takes Kevin's side throughout the book. Whatever he is accused of (and, more often than not, rightly so) - by Eva, by teachers, by other parents - must simply be exaggeration on Eva's side or the effect of parents being lied to by their own children or teachers on witch hunts. The possibility that Kevin did something bad simply does not compute, which makes him seem rather simple-minded.

Then little Celia, a hapless and trusting creature, comes along and she is really the only one to feel sorry for in the book. Her mother thinks of her as a 'sap'. The poor kid one day loses her eye in an incident involving liquid cleaner while being under supervision of her older brother. Franklin assures Kevin that he 'shouldn't feel bad' about what happened and how it wasn't his fault, secretly convinced that Eva must have not locked the cupboard the cleaner was in.

Throughout the letters both, Franklin and Celia, are strangely absent but it is not initially clear whether Kevin's deeds caused the family to point fingers and Franklin to remove Celia from an incompetent mother's grasp or we are in for an even wider disaster than the shooting of high school kids. (We are.)

In the end, Eva remains bound by loyalty, rather than love, to Kevin.

The book was turned into a (very, very good) film in 2011.

9/10