Rating: 
Summary: Horribly Honest
Review: I wouldn't recommend this book for everyone. The beginning is a bit slow, and perhaps not what would you might expect. Instead of a gruesome "true crime" novel, this book is largely about one woman's stuggle with motherhood. Eva is so terribly honest, that I found it really difficult to like her. I expected her to be a sympathetic character. In fact, I found her self-centered and grating throughout most of her narrative. However, by the end of this account I had wept and cheered for Eva This book was a definite journey, and in the end I found some understanding of Eva, Franklin, Celia and even Kevin.
Rating: 
Summary: Sleeping Pill
Review: As a graduate of Saint Leo College's Criminology program, I am attracted to crime writing like a magnet. Some crime writers have a God given gift for getting inside the criminal's head. Some of my favorites are Ann Rule, Jack Olson, James Pruitt, and especially Don Pendleton. Lionel Shriver is one of the least creative crime writers to ever enter the craft.
She created a collection of fictional letters that chronicle a mother's life throughout her motherhood. The fact that her son happens to be a convicted mass murderer comes out as incidental.
Shriver should have devoted ten times more material to Kevin's psycho-pathology, cut out all the daily grind, and left out the mother's unimportant observations on life.
Shriver's letter writer needs a Carl Roger's type sounding board instead of a reader looking to be entertained. Shriver doesn't pay me by the hour!
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful albeit devastating...
Review: I read this one sllloowwllly - both because I had "a feeling" the worst was going to be realized and because Lionel's writing is so fabulous, I didn't want to see it end.Do *not* miss this one.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing and moving...
Review: The only reason I gave this book four stars is because I found it to be a bit of a slow starter, but perhaps that's only me. Otherwise, its immensely difficult subject matter and excellent writing made it one of the best books I've read in the past several years. I can't recommend this book highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: Best Book I've Read In Ages....
Review: It's the first time in many years I haven't been able to put a book down....and since I've finished it, the story and the feelings the novel evoked within me has lingered. I had never heard of Lionel Shriver before, but I will look for her other work in the future!! I felt the lead character, Eva, was a well drawn, dramatically different portrait of how a parent feels when their first-born child effectively ends the family's way of life as they had known it. Bravo, Lionel!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Leaden Arrow
Review: I thought this was a well written book that was very riveting. This book is written in epistle form with the protagonist/ narrator, Eva Khatchadourian writing to her estranged husband, Franklin Plaskett about their deeply disturbed and possibly evil son, Kevin. The letters span from November 8, 2000 until late 2001. Their son Kevin, born on April 11, 1983 has the singular distinction of killing seven classmates, a teacher and a cafeteria worker with a crossbow and arrows. Why did Kevin kill these people? And what forces could have created him? Eva describes her life with Franklin in Tribeca, a fashionable district in Manhattan prior to Kevin's tumultuous birth. Ambivalent about parenthood, Eva never really takes to it where Kevin is concerned. This is largely because of Kevin's incessant screaming; his anger and seeming unwillingess to be pacified. Before he is a year old, Kevin has managed to send more than one nanny away in desperation. Eva plainly does not like this child from the start. She tells the infant how happy she was before he was born and how she missed her job because it often required her to travel out of the country. Franklin, on the other hand appears to be oblivious to Kevin's problems. Eva and Franklin run into some communications issues when Franklin buys a house in Nyack, a suburb in Rockland County, New York in 1987. Problems with Kevin abound from the beginning. He has no attachments to any objects; no favorite activities or playthings and no bond to any person. He demolishes his 3rd birthday cake with wicked glee; he destroys toys and taunts a waitress with a facial birthmark. Upon moving to Nyack, he torments the movers; he fills his squirt gun with ink and defaces Eva's study walls, including her beloved maps. Eva kept the maps displayed so people would see Kevin's true colors. Wrathful at the 4-year-old's destructive streak, Eva confiscates the gun, stamping it with her feet. I didn't like it when she told Kevin, "no toys for jerks," in a gleeful tone. Although her pleasure at taking the toy were understandable, I didn't like that comment. Kevin exacts revenge by destroying her favorite white caftan with fruit juice squirted from his gun. Once having destroyed her favorite garment, he no longer has any use for the toy. Other problems with Kevin arise. He refuses to be toilet trained and, in an amazing show of faith, a Montessori kindergarten accepts him for the 1988-89 school year. Eva is required to make at least three trips to the school because the teacher refused to clean up a 5-year-old due to a fear of legal consequences. Kevin relishes this form of control; he delights in Eva's wrath and discomfort in providing these ministrations and goes on a soiling campaign until July of 1989. The summer of 1989 is a turning point for both Eva and Kevin. I didn't like the way she referred to herself as "Mommer" (a stupid corruption of a maternal appellation) and spoke of herself in the third person. Displeased at having to spend a summer with Kevin, Eva makes attempts to teach him to read and compute figures, only to find out he had acquired these skills and loved watching her efforts and "making her feel useless." On one memorable occasion in July of 1989, Eva breaks Kevin's arm. Enraged at yet a third soiling episode in the same day, Eva flings Kevin across the room where he banged his arm against the changing table, the very bone of contention. (I wondered why try lifting a larger, older child onto a changing table instead of using a changing pad on the floor. A changing pad seemed safer to me). Instead of being frightened or traumatized, Kevin delights in having Eva over a barrel. He does not disclose the cause of his severely broken arm and by the time they return from the hospital he decided to be fully toilet trained. In an almost unbelievable show of faith, Franklin buys their story of Kevin "falling off the table onto his Tonka truck." Some ten years after that horrific episode, Kevin explained that developmental delay as "being able to get away with something the other kids [in kindergarten] did not." Just what he thought he was getting away with and why or how he saw this as being preferable remains a mystery. In 1991 Kevin's baby sister Celia is born and is the light of Eva's life. Serene and accepting, she is Kevin's opposite number. She acquires self-care skills early and is not demanding. The only interlude in Kevin's life was when he was 10 and ill with a fever. That was the only time in his life when he acted in an affectionate way toward Eva or Celia, then 2. Once he has recovered, it's business as usual. Kevin's cruelties become more insidious and destructive. By the time he reached middle school, he humiliates a classmate on the dance floor; he encourages another boy to destroy a teacher's reputation and engage in questionable activities and acts out sexually. He insists on wearing outgrown clothing so as to be maximally exposed; he torments Eva by exposing himself to her. Celia is not safe from Kevin. In February 1998, Kevin poured a caustic fluid in her eye causing it to be removed. Celia, always patient and accepting, buys Kevin's story of "washing out her eye." Only Franklin remains cheerfully oblivious to Kevin's warped development. In time, Franklin would bear the brunt of Kevin's wrath. On April 8, 1999 Kevin rebuffs Franklin in a most abrasive manner before departing for school. Once there, he somehow convinces his victims to assemble in the gym where he systematically kills them. In time, the motive given would be that each one of these people had a "favorite" activity and focus in their lives. Kevin ends up in an upstate jail where he revels in his atrocities and says how the Columbine boys upstaged him by killing more people than he did twelve days after his rampage. Kevin becomes an avid follower of school violence stories; he ranks each killer based on that killer's motives; weapons and personality. Although I didn't like Eva, I did feel sorry for her. I think Kevin was truly evil.
Rating:
Summary: We Need To Talk About Shriver
Review: We Need to Talk About Kevin is a masterful fictionalized account of the tortured psyche of the mother of a "bad seed" son who stages a Columbine-like massacre at his school. Although we know from the outset that this tragedy will unfold, it is through Shriver's brilliant writing that we journey into the heart and soul of the mother who both loves and hates her own creation.In letters to her estranged husband we can follow this tragedy from Eva's prenatal angst through her post murder heartbreak and guilt.Shriver takes us into the mind of Eva as she struggles to cope with the guilt and pain wrought by Kevin's unimaginable act. As Kevin's evil kernel unravels the fabric of an entire family we are there in Eva's mind trying to understand as she tries.We are angered by her husband's refusal to see.........we are saddened by her sensitive, innocent daughter's being caught in this web........we are pained by Eva's anger and heartbreak and by the love she still feels for Kevin despite everything. We are confounded by the inability to understand the reasons for this tragedy.......Ultimately we are amazed that a writer can be so brilliant in telling this story with all of its complexites. We need to talk about Shriver ......a truly gifted writer!!! ...
Rating:
Summary: this book devastated me
Review: Maximum devastation... Upon finishing this book I knew that any preconceived notions or ideas that I had about motherhood and unconditional love had been sent out the proverbial window. Other reviews have rehashed the description of the story so I will not bother with that. Let me simply say that this book is devastating (there's that word again), shocking, decidedly un-PC and very, very honest. I am disturbed however by the blurb on the back of my galley copy that describes "We Need to Talk About Kevin" as an "undergound feminist hit". What in God's name does that mean? Why feminist? Because a strong woman serves as the narrator (love or hate her you must admit that Eva is a strong woman)? Because it is "feminist" to admit that you don't always like-let-alone-love your children? I think this label detracts from the amazing story told within this book's pages...don't read this book because it is a "feminist story"; read it because it is an AMAZING story!
Rating:
Summary: blistering and brilliant
Review: I'd never heard of Lionel Shriver, but of all the fictional interpretations of Columbine that I've read, this was by far the best. It's tough, complex, weird, vivid, and frightening and I could not put it down. The narrator is far from likeable -- she's beyond unreliable -- and yet I ended up really liking and feeling for her. A vain, selfish woman to begin with, she's completely devastated by what her son becomes. And even that monstrous son -- Shriver makes him human and (somewhat) sympathetic. What a feat. I can not recommend this book highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful but not so shocking
Review: I just finished We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, a brilliant novelist. At first I was put off by the overly ambitious vocabulary, but as soon as the story took hold of me I couldn't put it down. All the characters were fascinating and utterly believable. I kept wondering how the author was able to so perfectly create Kevin's sociopathic personality without actually having lived with such a child. I found Franklin (the father) very frustrating in his naivite. But let's face it men often do lack the gene that enables them to read into people and see the worst. The dynamic between Eva (the mother), Franklin and Kevin rang so true.
I was expecting to be more torn in my analysis of Eva's culpability. But from very early on in the book, my feeling was that in spite of Eva's reluctance to have children and her utter disdain for pregnancy, she was guilt free. She never bonded with Kevin largely because of Kevin's initial rejection of her. He continued to reject her along with the rest of the world and made it impossible for her to love him. The one time in the book when he offered her the slightest glimmer of an open heart (when he was sick with a high fever) she was ready to run with it. He wouldn't let her though and thoroughly enjoyed snatching away the hope he had offered her. A bad seed. Clearly, a bad seed.
I was not at all shocked by the "twist", but rather had suspected it early on. The fact that it was held back in order to be shocking felt manipulative to me and I think Ms. Shriver is a better writer than that. I also feel the ending is unbelievable, given Kevin's pathology. For these reasons I've only given 4 stars. I did however, love this book. The best I've read in a long time.
| 
