Published 2003 / Length 400 pages
We Need to Talk About Kevin has become a classic choice for book clubs worldwide: controversial, shocking and psychologically intense, this is a novel that polarizes opinions and is guaranteed to spark a lively debate amongst its readers. The bare plot bones alone reveal that this is not a comfortable read. In a series of letters to her absent husband, Eva Khatchadourian tells the story of their teenage son, Kevin, who one fatal Thursday murders seven of his fellow students and two high-school workers in a cold-blooded massacre. The novel follows Kevin’s life story from his birth to the present day, where he resides in prison, tracing Eva’s increasing alienation from her son as the events build up to their terrible (and unexpected) climax. At its heart, the book poses a number of disturbing questions about the nature of evil, the alienation of modern American society, and the nature-versus-nurture debate. Above all, it explores the last great taboo of motherhood: the bonds and limitations of ‘unconditional’ parental love.
‘Is the author suggesting that human evil is the product of imperfect mothering? Far from being a free and frank investigation into the truth about motherhood, is this, in fact, a Republican morality tale proffering dark warnings about the price of women’s liberation?’ – The Guardian
• Who do you think was ultimately to ‘blame’ for Kevin’s actions? Could the final outcome have been prevented?
• How reliable did you find Eva as a narrator? Did you always believe her version of events and did you find her sympathetic?
• The epigraph to the book is a quote by Erma Bombeck: ‘A child needs your love when he deserves it least.’ Do you think the events of the novel bear this out?
• Lionel Shriver herself does not have children. Do you think this is relevant in her depiction of motherhood?
• We Need to Talk About Kevin won the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction.
• Lionel Shriver was born in the US and has lived in Israel, Nairobi, Bangkok, Vietnam and Belfast, now dividing her time between London and New York. We Need to Talk About Kevin is her seventh book.
• In summer 2003, The New York Observer reported that Kevin had gained a word-of-mouth feminist following. The novelist Pearson Marx stated: ‘This book has given women permission to feel things that they weren’t allowed to feel.’
• Vernon God Little by D. B. C. PIERRE (see here) – another recent novel exploring the American high-school-killings phenomenon, though from a very different perspective.
• Madame Bovary by GUSTAVE FLAUBERT – the archetypal ambivalent mother.
• Unless by CAROL SHIELDS – a middle-class American mother struggles to cope with her daughter’s withdrawal from society.
• Nineteen Minutes by JODI PICOULT – examines the impact on personal lives and the wider community when a high-school massacre occurs.