We Need To Talk About Kevin

[SleepingStandingUp]

Just finished it. I called the twist but still thought out was brilliantly done.

So who was really to blame?

Waiting or did he do it so that he'd be the only one left for her to love?

I assumed that Same. Dad he never actually liked and Celia was his competition

The major problem that I had with the book was that the family was stinking rich and living in the USA, the epicentre of the therapy world. So why didn't they just get the best intervention that money could buy?

Yes, yes and thrice yes.

I dislike this book. It's awfully clever, very well written, clear and lucid and I'm a sucker for unreliable narrators but it is basically nonsense for the reason you give. That is even more apparent in the film.

I loved this book, read it yrs ago and still get cold shivers when i think about it.
I think / thought they did try to send him to see a shrink several times in the book ? or am i remembering wrong

think it is absolutely classic examination of the omnipresent 'nature vs nurture' argument and leaves it unresolved, as frankly it is unresolvable.

sadly i have just not been able to get on much with her other books, have read 'big brother' - i think it was called that..and felt bitterly let down at the end, it was as if LS had been laughing at the reader all along with her little joke.
the one about the tennis players was dull and the one about the man wanting to go and retire to some island again..dull

I enjoyed (possibly the wrong word) the book, but agree it is a huge caricature.

It's almost a bit lazy in places... Franklin is clearly aware of the problems between Eva and Kevin but does absolutely fuck all about it?

Eva believes that her son caused significant damage to her daughter and other than wringing her hands does pretty much fuck all about it? Apart from deciding not to let him babysit her anymore.

I don't think the aim of the book is a nature vs nurture argument - the events of the book are simply too unrealistic for any argument either way to hold much merit.

Given Shriver's own comments about it, I think it's a child free woman's treatise on what could go wrong if you have a child - either you have a born evil wee fucker who you cannot control or change, or you have an innocent new born who you fuck up inexorably - either way the end result is the same.

Clearly, Shriver has used extremes in this - both Kevin and Eva's behaviour deviates far from the norm.

The theme of Eva's loss of identity is recurrent throughout the book - from the guilt tripping regarding her business and overseas travel, Kevin's destruction of her study, the move to the suburbs to finally being forever famous not as a successful business woman or her personal achievements but because of her mass-murdering son.

Again, we are talking about extremes, but as a child free by choice woman myself, one of the factors that lead me to that decision was the prospect of losing 'who I was'.

sorry for the essay. I should be tidying so am procrastinating on mumsnet

(and I promise there were paragraphs in that when I typed it.... This bloody app!)

"Given Shriver's own comments about it, I think it's a child free woman's treatise on what could go wrong if you have a child - either you have a born evil wee fucker who you cannot control or change, or you have an innocent new born who you fuck up inexorably - either way the end result is the same. "

surely that is the esscence of the nature vs nurture arguement ?

I hated the mother.

The twist, I didn't so much see it coming as I assumed that that was the way it was from very early on, so didn't realise it was a twist.

I loved the book though.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

JesusInTheCabbageVan my first assumption was pity or empathy etc, he wanted her to be pissed off like usual. Then I assumed he was looking to see if she knew yet - pure hatred or something.
Maybe he's relieved he doesn't have to see it. Maybe he's glad she still has it to come

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

Flopflop67 I really like that analogy.

Just finished rereading this, such a powerful book

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

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.