When I heard an interview with Lionel Shriver, the author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, on NPR, I was fascinated not only by the discussion of the too-pertinent story of Kevin Khatchadourian, a teenager who shoots up his school, but also by Shriver’s own non-pandering demeanor. I knew immediately that I liked this author and wanted to read her book.
The story is written as a series of letters from Kevin’s mother, Eva, to her her estranged husband, Kevin’s father, Franklin. The dense and formal prose is somewhat unexpected and intimidating, but it establishes Eva’s character perfectly: She’s a highly successful travel writer by trade, and she can be conspicuously cosmopolitan and condescending.
Eva misses Franklin, and her letters read like a sort of self-therapy. She recollects the entire marriage, beginning with their indecision, and finally, decision to have a child. Her monologue is largely philosophical, especially in the beginning. Although the story moves slowly until her pregnancy, you should read these early chapters with patience and care, as they establish the critical dynamics of Eva and Franklin’s separate relationships with Kevin. Once Kevin is born, the story gains momentum with astounding episodes of his schemes and deviances.
Eva’s character is brilliantly complex. You probably won’t think, “Gee, I like this girl!” But still, you will feel some empathy - even genuine sympathy - for her, as she is shockingly honest about her most unflattering thoughts. Yes, she can be pompous, but she wants and tries to be a good mother to Kevin despite her inclinations toward the opposite, and despite his repellant behaviors, as he deliberately and systematically destroys any semblance of her formerly pleasant life.
Franklin, on the other hand, is simple, and pathetically so. He’s a good-hearted, true-blue kind of guy, the type of person you’d want for your kid’s elementary school teacher, but probably not for your psychoanalyst, and certainly not for the father of the sociopathic teenager next door. Undiscerning of anything outside his cheery, perfect-family bubble, he quickly evolves into Kevin’s oblivious lackey.
From conception, Kevin doggedly commits his existence to the discomfiting of others and the destruction of expressions of love. He seems inherently evil and utterly unlikeable. But through one small event in a novel full of horrible acts, Shriver complicates his character and uncovers the tiniest goodness - or at least normalcy - in him. This is the one thing that keeps the reader in awe of Kevin despite the inevitable revulsion.
I wonder if Kevin’s behavioral profile is similar to that of real-life mass murderers. Can a person actually be as staunchly hostile as Kevin is from birth? I don’t know how Shriver researched the story, and I’m too lazy to do the work myself, but if you can knowledgeably answer my question, please comment!
Shriver’s erudite prose requires that her reader is no dummy. The language may be daunting at first, but the telling is so eloquent and detailed, the vocabulary so precise, that, if you don’t rush, you’ll get an alluring view into the psyche of one of modern literature’s most multidimensional protagonists.
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| Lionel Shriver (photo by Walnut Whippet) |
If your edition of Kevin includes the “p.s.” in back, don’t skip it! In three separate sections, Shriver writes a quirky little bio, discusses the book itself, and briefly summarizes several other novels she recommends (including only one of her own). Her written voice is classy and sassy. I admired her writing so much that I also must respect her literary opinion, and I therefore added several of her recommendations to my Better-Read-That list.
