Product Description

Kevin Khatchadourian killed several of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher, shortly before his sixteenth birthday. He is visited in prison by his mother, Eva, who narrates in a series of letters to her estranged husband, Franklin, the story of Kevin's upbringing. A successsful career woman, Eva is reluctant to forgo her independence and the life she shares with Franklin to become a mother. Once Kevin is born, she experiences extreme alienation and dislike of Kevin as he grows up to become a spiteful and cruel child. When Kevin commits his murderous act, Eva fears that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become. But how much is she to blame?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21059 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 436 pages

Telegraph, December 3, 2005
'Fearless novel'

New Stateman, November 28, 2005
Compelling account of parental feelings in extremis

Polly Toynbee, Guardian Weekly Books of the Year
‘This startling shocker strips bare motherhood… the most remarkable Orange prize victor so far’

Customer Reviews

Chilling yet heart-warming; an honest mother speaks
A church I used to visit in London had a curious crib each Christmas. Alongside the usual representations of shepherds, livestock and the Holy family the priest would solemnly place a knife. When asked about this, he would reply, "There is a dark side to Christmas too. Herod killed because Jesus came. That knife reminds us of the pain of all those parents who lost their young ones because of Christmas."

We Need To Talk About Kevin tells the story of a modern-day Slaughter of the Innocents. This novel, which won the 2005 Orange prize for fiction, contains the letters of Eva to her estranged husband Franklin. Their only son, Kevin, has become famous in gruesome fashion, by hunting down seven of his classmates (along with a teacher and canteen worker for good measure) with a crossbow after locking them into the school gym. The writing is masterly, brooding and claustrophobic, as Eva tries to answer the question that every parent must sometimes ask themselves - "Where did we go wrong?" - only multiplied by a factor of a hundred.

Kevin is the child, student, son, brother from hell. Life appears completely meaningless to him from the point of birth, indeed, from well before birth. He refuses to take his mother's milk, he wears diapers until he is six (out of spite, Eva believes) and alienates nannies so fast that the agency can't keep up. His sister gets bleach in her eye and loses the sight in it (no accident, says Eva, but she has no proof): he then eats a pack of lychees as her operation is being discussed. Kevin is nasty, but worse than that, he is nasty and bright. Each misdemeanor is judged to perfection, ensuring he gets away with it. And in any case, how do you punish a boy who does not care about anything?

Perhaps most insidious of all is the way Kevin divides and rules. His father is a perennial optimist and believes completely in him, offering the unconditional love that we more often expect from the mother. Eva cannot convince Franklin that they have a monster on their hands: perhaps if they could have agreed on this, Kevin might have changed or been changed.

What is the Christian to make of all this? The classic line from the Church has been that everyone without exception is made in the image of God, and thus despite our fallen nature, however warped we may have become, in our heart of hearts each one of us is good. Those saints who have managed to unwarp (or should that be unwrap?) themselves with God's help show us our true nature as human beings. Yet what do we say to a woman who has longed to find good in her son for seventeen years but has found none?

There are moments of hope in this book, despite the bleak and tragic story-line. Eva herself somehow redeems the horror of what her son has done by her exquisitely honest account of attempting to mother him. In the closing pages her own sacrificial love becomes almost Christlike in its intensity. This is a book that challenges us to make real a God that we say loves Hitler as his own child. It is not a book you will ever forget.

Lionel Dare
Lionel Shriver's epistolary novel "We Need To Talk About Kevin" recounts the childhood of Kevin Katchadourian through the eyes of his mother, Eva. Kevin commits mass murder at the age of 16, and through letters to her husband, Franklin, Eva attempts to find clues in his upbringing.

This is a complex, intelligent novel that asks more questions than it answers. The author never shies from controversial artistic choices. Kevin appears to be born a sociopath rather than made so through emotional neglect or abuse. Eva admits not bonding with her son. And, while some readers may end up frustrated by the conflicting perceptions in the book, I found it raised thought-provoking questions; the author cites enough examples of US high-school mass murders where the motives remain murky to back up her argument that there isn't always a simplistic answer to why teenagers can commit such atrocities.

On the negative side, I felt that Eva was not a sympathetic character, though there never appears to be any clear indication that she has passed on sociopathic tendencies to her son. And the fact that Kevin appears to be born bad rather than gets corrupted distracts us from the need to recognize that damaging family environments are the main cause of maladjustment - but that is the precisely the sentimental PC position that Eva would hate.

Verbose and dull

I realise I fall into the smaller category of people who didn't enjoy this book and I'll tell you why.
The book bored me - the language used was pretentious and far too lengthy.
The reason the book didn't get only one star from me is because I can appriciate there were moments in the book that I enjoyed, however, they was a great lack of them.
I was told before hand there was a twist - there wasn't. I think I realise what is intended to be the twist, but it wasn't anything surprising at all.
I hated the main character and I could not sympathise with her at all. She didn't deserve what she got, but her negitivity about every little thing became mind numbing and he dislike from Kevin the day he was born put me right off her.
If you can't stand verbose tedious writing, don't bother with this.