We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver

I’ll put up a couple disclaimers now: I quit the book halfway through, and I had expectations about how the book was going to go which were not met. I understand these are my failings and not the author’s. But I still didn’t like the book. Child killers are an interesting concept that needs to be developed/addressed, but not in the way Shriver attempted.

Kevin was a teen who shot up his New York high school. The book is narrated from his mother’s point of view, through a series of letters written to her estranged husband. Unfortunately, she focuses more on her husband and her feelings as opposed to Kevin. I understand that Shriver is trying to pinpoint her as the problem (or she is trying to blame herself because her husband has) but it’s exhausting to a reader, especially since Kevin and his version of the story is what I wanted to read about.

 I’ve had this morbid fascinating with mass murders and serial killers for a while now. I always have just wanted to understand their thinking; why was it okay to them that they ended someone else’s life? How could they see other people as lesser to their wants? Where did their compassion go?

I was hoping this book would be third person omniscient narrated, describing Kevin growing up and the signs of his murderous tendencies would be analyzed and dealt with by parents and experts. Essentially, I was hoping for Dexter but when the killer was still in the child stages. Yup, I know this is my fault, but I’;m being honest. First-person narrative from the mom’s perspective killed this book for me (PUNNY).

This book also hit a little close to home because her husband is putting pressure on her to have children and the horrible feeling she had during her pregnancy. I’ve had to deal with a similar situation with an ex, and it was something that killed the relationship. Reading how alien the pregnancy was for the mother and how she was too self-absorbed to be able to raise Kevin correctly poked at the fear that I once had: am I so selfish that I don’t want kids? Or was my aversion to motherhood from some other reason?

To be fair, she looks way more like a serial killer's mother than I do.

It was uncomfortable to read because I wanted to kill the husband and for her to forget about Kevin. I didn’t understand why she was punishing herself because of what her son did. In retrospect, Shriver might have been sneakily trying to make her the villain in the story, but that feels too obviously Freudian to me; it’s not always the mother’s fault. Ultimately she’s trapped herself in this scenario where her cage is her guilt and no one is there to help her through it. It might make for a good horror book, but ultimately it wasn’t fast-paced enough for me and the characters were annoying. I might watch the movie later to finish the story, but I definitely won't spend the time reading it.

Goodreads link