We Need To Talk About Kevin

I found this book very, very difficult to read for personal reasons.

However it is beautifully written and a fascinating read. I would love to read it again - hopefully I will be less emotional the second time round and enjoy the book for the great read it is.

The twist was obvious from very early on. Because she might have divorced the dad, but would still have had contact with the daughter. So that spoilt it a bit.
Of course she was not to blame for how Kevin turned out. I was amazed at how hard she tried with Kevin. I would have tried much less hard with him. But I blame her for the daughter's death. After he poured bleach in her eye she should have separated them.

Thank you

Oh, it worked!

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/spot-psychopath/amp/

This is an article about the subject generally which also mentions the psychiatrist and the book he wrote (about halfway through the article so you need to read or scroll through a bit to get to it).

Sorry, I don't know how to do clicky links.

Emily what is the book called please ?

Wow that's shocking and quite disturbing

I read a book a while ago about a scientist who was studying brains and genetic makeup to see if you could spot psychopaths. He determined that sometimes you could tell by looking at a brain scan that someone was very likely to be a psychopath. He tried to test his theory by looking at brain scans of people who'd committed the most awful crimes alongside lots of scans from "normal" people. Whilst doing this he came across an individual who had absolutely every marker for psychopathy.

It turned out to be him.

When he told his family they weren't surprised. He has quite odd in a number of ways, but despite it all he was law abiding (as an adult), had a happy family life and a successful career. So, he wanted to know, what had saved him from going down the very dark road he seemed predestined to travel? He put it down to having an amazingly loving mother and a blissfully happy, completely trauma free childhood.

It took me ages to get into it. My friend told me to persevere.
It was memorable in a disturbing way.

Just finished rereading this, such a powerful book

Flopflop67 I really like that analogy.

Just started rereading this due to this thread!

I didn't see the twist at the end beforehand, I read it when I was at uni doing a social work degree, and our tutor advised us all to read it

I once heard a woman on the radio talking about autism. I think what she said was pertinent to all parenting and in the context of the book very apt.

She likened the brain to a garden. We're all born with our own particular garden. Some of us may have rich fertile soil, others acidic soil, still others rocky bad soil. The soil cannot be changed.

However the outcome of the garden depends on the gardener. A good gardener will nurture and nourish the garden.

So a poor garden will flourish with a good gardener who will add good things to the soil and feed it and nourish it.

A rich garden will be fine even without a good gardener. Maybe not as magnificent as it might be with a talented gardener but it will be healthy and good.

I think Kevin was an example of a child with a poor garden and a poor gardener. A perfect storm.

I read the book 10 years ago and it has never left me. I am a teacher and see lots of different little "gardens" in front of me every day and I really hope they'll all flourish in their own ways.

Captain ooh, you could be right. Though wouldn't he have looked disappointed if it had been that? After all, he did leave them there for her to find.

Jesus, isn’t he looking to see if she knows about Franklin and Celia? And he relaxes because she doesn’t yet. Then she goes home and finds them, doesn’t she?

I got most frustrated with Franklin whilst reading. There was no chance of professional help for Kevin because Franklin refused to listen to Eva and couldn’t see what Kevin was experiencing.

I felt sympathetic towards Kevin when he was ill and let his guard slip and revealed how much he needed his mother. That was quite heart-rending. Other than that, he was pretty terrifying.

The twist slowly dawned on me - I kept waiting for a reply from Franklin and then I started to suspect...

Poor little Celia. The torture she experiences and then finally the murder when she trusts her brother so much is very hard to stomach. I blamed Franklin and Eva for not protecting her better when reading.

Nineteen Minutes was very sad.

The bit I always wonder about is when he was driven away in the police car. She says he was searching very hard for something in her face, and when he didn't find it, he seemed to relax. Was it just love he was looking for, or something else?

Surely the point of the book is to open debate on nature v nurture and Eva's viewpoint is just that. We don't know how Franklin saw what was going on, just how Eva saw his perception after the event. I love this book for not providing answers. Which is unusual for me, as I usually need to know exactly what was going on!

I really loved this book although I have to say I read it years ago.

I don't why know why all the rest of her books are so different

The question about why the parents didn't get intervention despite being rich is fully answered in the book for me. The dad doesn't think there's anything wrong with Kevin, he thinks it's all in Eva's head and she is just too hard on him, blames him for everything and any slight against her is perceived. Like when Kevin ruins the mother's study, the father thinks it's just childish hijinks and that she shouldn't take it so personally. How WOULD you go about contacting a professional as a mother if the child's father readily wrote off the child's behaviours as normal, and you taking personal offence where none was intended? Even with the incident with Celia, Eva thinks he hurt her deliberately, Franklin thinks it was an accident. They're not on the same page, Eva can't just go it alone into therapy.

theredjellybean Yes, of course. But what I'm trying to say (badly!) is that I think in the context of the book the nature vs. nurture argument is not hugely relevant.

I do wonder if that is the reason why Shriver deployed the letters to Franklin as a device - letters written after all the events have taken place which would clearly colour past events. It means that Eva as a narrator is hugely unreliable.

I think had the intention been to examine nature vs nurture a more objective narrative device would have been used.

I wonder what the same book written from the point of view of the various characters contemporaneously would show on the subject - I think that would give a better grounding for a nature vs nurture debate.

I also thought that they all massively lie to themselves and fail to communicate. The father just has this idea of what he wants and fails to entertain the notion that anything is going wrong with that even in the face of much evidence. Eva cant take a step back from her emotions and believes totally in her feeling that her son is evil without questioning where that comes from and Kevin feels that he is superior and everyone else is fake and against him.
They are completely unable to communicate or reach each other or even have any understanding for each other. They all seem to blame each other without looking at their own behaviour. Its both really sad and really frightening because I think its something quite common in all families: this deep level of misunderstanding and burying heads in sand. Obviously not to the same extent in most cases but I think she taps in to some very real fears a lot of people have about family life.

I thought the interesting thing about it was that no one was clearly to blame and yet they all played a significant part in creating the situation. (I mean Kevin and his parents) I simultaneously felt sorry for all the characters whilst also disliking them. You could relate to all of them which I thought was really clever, even Kevin who does awful things. I felt very sorry for him because I compared it to my own teenage years where I went through a period of depression and became very self obsessed. You do change so much as a person from 15-20. I only ever hurt myself but that got me thinking about gender and how boys are more likely to outwardly express themselves ie in a violent or aggressive manner. I tried to kill myself as a teen and failed, And as a result got to go on with my life and grow and change. Kevin gets consumed by himself and is unable to think of consequences just as I was, but he expresses his pain outwardly and succeeds in doing so and takes away the lives of others. As a result he will never be able to continue with his life even if he does grow and change. This is really indicated at the end of the book where he seems to start coming to some realisation of what hes actually done (or perhaps its just that his mum starts to see him as human rather than evil) And so I did feel very deeply sorry for him despite obviously thinking what he did was horrendous.

I thought it was such an interesting book.