“We Need to Talk About Kevin”by Lionel Shriver

REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE

“Motherhood. Now that’s a foreign country.”

Lionel Shriver’s novel about the complications of motherhood and the influence of parenting on a child’s development is gripping, frank, and forces readers to meditate on the unthinkable. Two years prior, Eva Khatchadourian’s son Kevin was solely responsible for a school massacre that killed 7 of his fellow classmates, a teacher, and a cafeteria worker in Nyack, New York. Now in a correctional facility, Kevin shows no remorse for his actions and revels in the media attention. In a series of letters to her husband Franklin, Eva recounts their whimsical courtship, the fraught decision to have a child, and the repercussions of that child being difficult to love. 

Shriver’s writing is intense, yet comical. I found myself laughing out loud even though it felt wrong to do so. Her exploration of themes such as American exceptionalism, the intense weight of motherhood, and parenting mishaps are compelling, as they resonate for anyone who has ever been responsible for rearing a child. Shriver refuses political correctness, instead diving into the obscene, the honest truths we think, but would never say out loud. In Eva’s voice, we sense a woman who has refused to conform to the grieving mother of a murderer. Instead of defending her child, she insists, in retrospect, that the signs were always there, but points out the absurdity of asking why someone didn’t prevent a tragedy they couldn’t have previously imagined. In the letters to Franklin, Eva provides her side of the story, revisiting the complex matrix of parenting alongside someone with contrasting views of how it should be done. 

Shriver’s ability to braid the unfolding plot alongside social commentary lessens the harshness of the blow. The book is a difficult read, in that Shriver uses sometimes complex terminology and the story is quite long. For example, after dealing with the aftermath for quite some time, Eva writes: “I’m not sure what got into me, but I’m so tired of this. I’m exhausted with shame, slippery all over with its sticky albumen taint. It’s not an emotion that leads anywhere.” I would recommend this book to a specific type of reader – one who enjoys contemplating difficult subject matter, in this case, the epidemic of school violence by affluent white males. 

As a mother, I could relate to the questions about having children in the first place, the impact on an otherwise solid marriage, and the sacrifice expected of women once they give birth. As Eva explains the challenges of raising a son who seems to hate her, further complicated by a husband who refuses to see it, readers can sympathize with her plight. The book’s shocking ending still haunts me. We Need to Talk About Kevin was awarded the Orange Prize in 2005 and was adapted into a movie, by the same name, starring Tilda Swinton in 2011.

“Trying to be a good mother may be as distant from being a good mother as trying to have a good time is from truly having one.”