We Need to Talk About Kevin

‘We need to talk about Kevin' is Lionel Shriver's debut novel. With nearly 500 pages, written in the form of letters to her husband, Eva recalls the upbringing of Kevin, their first-borne; from his birth till his incarceration at the age of 15 for mass murder. Certain books give away a feeling of it being the author's life's work. Like ‘All the light we cannot see' or ‘To kill a mocking bird'. It could be the length, or how it asks all the right questions or how polished the whole thing is. It appears to the reader that the author has put their everything into it. I was surprised to find that, this isn't her only book.

This book isn't for everyone, and I believe there would only be a handful who resonate with it. There is a stencil of societal norms that rudely pervades every individual's thoughts and actions, at some point in late childhood or adolescence demanding us to walk within its bounds. This permanently molds our perspective. Societal norms guiding our actions are commonplace. Guiding our thoughts? Not so much. Thinking that the person next to you is really ugly, or that you really don't want to be with your partner anymore, or wishing you didn't have to take care of your sick mother are not really unfair thoughts. People understand these, even though they are not talked about or acted upon.

Eva wishes her child wasn't born, so she could go gallivanting across the globe. Eva hates her child. She never tells anyone that, of course.

Blessed with the miracle of new life, she chooses to dwell instead on a forgone glass of wine and the veins in her legs

Now if I could get my mother to read this book(which would be unlikely), she would fling this book out the window before the first chapter was over. And since the copy I got from the thrift store didn't have the first few pages, I bet something very similar did happened before. Most people would find Eva's thoughts unsavory. One-shalt-not-think-of such things. It is a thought crime. For the reader the usual frame of reference is lost. An average person cannot relate with Eva. Perspective is to be skewed to an uncomfortable degree to watch Eva's story through her eyes. Eva's narrative appears to be honest, primarily because she doesn't make the whole thing a white washing scheme for herself; she admits to being wrong at times, but whether it was just those times or were there more, we would never know.

As you would have presumed by now, this is not a happy book. Moments of happiness in this book are as sparse as stars in the night sky. The whole thing is dark. And when everything is going wrong, of course there should be someone to blame. In a book in which the ending is given away in its blurb itself, the captivating element is this mental exercise for the observer to figure out why this happened and who to blame. You get to play seesaw with the nature vs. nurture debate.

Throughout the novel one's opinion about each character would change. They certainly are not one dimensional, though Kevin appears to have no dimension at all. Kevin has no attachment to anything, person or object. He has no passion for anything. He has been in equilibrium since birth. A person's inclination(as well as circumstance) is what cuts a path for their life. Kevin who was inclined towards nothing; loved nothing, hated nothing, ends up killing people. The disinclination/whatever attitude, leads to evil in its purest form. Why did it slide in that direction? There should have been an equal probability of good in its purest form. The idea that goodness is always an uphill climb and evil is the stable low energy state is frightening, yet it could actually be the truth.

The book questions every aspect of parenting without pulling any punches.
”..if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation: the displacement amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your children's answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring”

Oh, I had all the answers when I started reading it, only by the end there were none. By the end I was going over chapters I had already read, when I couldn't believe what I was reading. Every minute I had to rearrange my mind to believe that this was only fiction, because over 400 pages of buildup to this tipping point, is insanely good writing - horrifying yet surprisingly immersive and original.

If you own an open mind, patience, a taste for good writing and at least had a passing interest in psychology, this would be just right for you.