About Kevin
April 25th 2007 08:21
Image: harpercollins.com
A few weeks ago when I picked up Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin and began to read, little did I know this topic would become front page news. For I was half way through the book when Seung-Hui Cho picked up his guns and started shooting in Virginia. Now I know these incidents are not particularly rare nowadays, all the same it became an uneasy read afterwards.
Shriver’s novel is told through a mother’s eyes in a series of letters written to her husband (Kevin’s father) after her son did the unthinkable and killed nine people in the high school auditorium. Presuming you have yet to read this book, I won’t spoil it and go into too much detail about Kevin, his motives or his choice of weapons, but we do have here a worse case scenario (Shriver’s words) that is not only a compelling read but one that has a heafty supply of social issues for today.
But the real power to this story is Eva, (Kevin’s mother) and the honesty with which she not only disects her son and his unhealthy psyhosis, but also her own role as a mother and wife. Motherhood did not come easily to Eva and life with Kevin was never pleasant. But where exactly does the blame begin and end for a parent? And where and when does a parent start to search for signs of carnage within their child?
I like Shriver’s approach to this unsettling story. It is not teary, sentimental or over-board with sympathy or retribution. If nothing else it points to the many variables that can attribute to such a devastating conclusion. And once finished, it is impossible to put the book down without a deep and sincere compassion for these families and what they go through.
I believe Jodi Picoult’s latest is also about this extreme behaviour in adolescents, but I have yet to read it, and somehow doubt she could possibly dig as deep as Shriver. For to go any deeper than Kevin surely would be all together too deep.
Postscript: About Kevin was 2005 Orange Prize Winner
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Comment by Nickoftime's Sanity Corner
wonderful if not a chillingly realistic connection to a real life event...I'll have to pick up the book and peruse it for myself...your review was great!
Take care,
Nick