We need to talk about Kevin

[maggiethecat]

Read it recently and was captivated by Shriver's style and the very disturbing subject matter.

I did not guess the ending although it all added up in hindsight. Did anyone suss it well before the end?

I actually thought the ending was quite obvious from fairly early on - sorry!
My husband didn't though.
I thought it was a really good book but I know many people don't like it - all personal choice I suppose.

thought the twist ending was obvious.hated this book

Saw the twist coming but was still hooked into watching how it all came out. I don't think I'd actually go as far as to say I liked the book - both of the main protagonists were fairly unpleasant/selfish people - but it was an absorbing read.

I thought the honesty of Eva's letters was brutal. I could actually identify with some of what she wrote though would be horrified to actually speak some of it.

It was contrived, obvious, psychologically inaccurate drivel.

It often surprises me that people couldn't see it coming.

contrived, inaccurate?

Yes, I guessed the ending from the very beginning. But I really enjoyed reading WNTTAK. There are lots of things to discuss about!

I HATED this. I skipped the middle and had about 3 years break from the bits I did read. It just went on and on and on.

If she'd posted on MN that mother would have been flamed!

I hated all the characters and would have been quite happy for Kevin to kill his mother too, if only to stop the book much sooner.

Janitor, I hardly think she is alone in her lack of warmth and love toward her child.

I don't think it was meant to be realistic. I am sure it was meant to be controversial and sell well.

I think Lionel Shriver is a very good writer, but I didn't get on with the book.

She used too many Big Words.

Contrived and inaccurate?

Yes, it was a very poor character study. It set up from its inception a dichotomy between nature/nurture, delusion/clear sight, good/bad and the characters were so polarised within this that it lacked any realism whatsoever. So Kevin was born evil and his sister utterly innocent. As inaccurately as I think Kevin was portrayed, his sister is worse, designed to be everything he isn't ie meek, mild, the victim. The mother is clear sighted and perceptive to her son's evil ways, the father deluded and unseeing. They couldn't be any less rigidly characterised if they were in a Christmas panto.

I didn't think it raised many questions but it certainly answered a few. Namely, Lionel Shriver neither likes nor understands children and SOH doesn't like reading books that are so bloody obvious and insistent in thematic content.

Er, I quite liked it...but I am clearly a dullard . I made the HUGE mistake of reading another of her books, about a woman who has an affair with a snooker player. It was drivel.

I liked it and didn't guess the final twist (I almost never do, somehow). I have to disagree with Show - the mother is a classic unreliable narrator. Yes, she sees one child as evil and one as good, but it's set up so that the reader should be questioning her view.

I don't really think that the book is the manifesto of Shriver's feelings towards children.
You don't need to be a mother to write a book about a mother/family/conventions etc, imho.

Nope, you don't need to be a mother to write a book about being a mother/family etc. But you need to understand that your self-confessed intense dislike of children colours the way in which you write them.

I have never read anything written by Shriver that isn't dripping with her own opinions and agenda. Which is alright if you like her opinions. Which I don't.

I just found it incredibly hard to read. There was nothing in it except relentless cruelty and misery and i found it upsetting.
And I am not normally like that about fiction.
Just gratuitous.

I see. Her other books didn't appeal to me either.
I really didn't read the novel as a universal dislike for children.

I thought this was one of the best books I have read and I recommended it highly to all my friends.
Hope they don't think it's drivel

I have read this and do you know what, I can't even remember the ending! In my defence I do read a lot of books.

Unfortunately some children are born "evil". It is human nature.

Irritating, horrible book - hated it! My mum recommended it to me, said how much she'd enjoyed reading it, so I was very disappointed!