Originally published in the US in 2003, Lionel Shriver's novel "We Need to Talk About Kevin" received huge critical acclaim and was awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005. My copy of the book was published in 2006 here in the UK. Somehow I missed most of the fuss over the novel and picked it up largely at random from the 3 for 2 section at Waterstones a couple of years ago. As a member of the Columbine generation, having been in high school in Canada when the shootings there occurred, the subject matter of the novel touches a nerve, still raw a decade later. I have since read several books along the same lines but Shriver's stands out as the most striking, emotional and haunting of them all.

The novel is structured as a series of letters from Eva to her husband Franklin beginning in November 2000. Separated from Franklin and their daughter, Eva struggles to understand her family, particularly her son, Kevin, and how they all came to their present situation. It is no secret from the start that a tragedy has occurred at the hands of her teenage son, a tragedy from which a family and a community will never fully recover. Retrospectively she tries to comprehend the son of whom she has always been slightly frightened, divorced from emotionally and to determine her own guilt. Had her son been born different, or had she made him that way? Was he unable to love properly because she failed to love him?

Shriver explores a philosophical and psychological question that has pervaded society almost from the start, but resonates now as much as ever; are some people born more likely to commit evil than others? She draws Eva in such a way that you are compelled directly into her life and her emotions. Somewhere out there in the world are many Eva's and she steps off the page into being from the first line. At times it is hard to step back and question her perspective as certainly it is not an objective one. You see her family entirely through her eyes and her sense of loss and failure. You enter her world and with her suffer a mother's worst nightmare.

The use of letters allows Shriver to explore decades in her slightly less than 500 page novel. It gives Eva a strong voice and encourages the reader to enter her stream of consciousness in a way that most straight forward story telling would not. Her style is gripping and well paced. Her vocabulary is intelligent and extensive but never showy or off putting. It is one of those novels that you pick up and cannot put down. When you reach the last page you are left still clinging to the book, unable to shake off the feeling that it could be any of us.

Shriver dedicates her work to Terri calling her novel "One worst-case scenario we've both escaped." One can only hope that we too will escape such a fate.

The cover of the book I have is different from that in the photo. I doubt this matters much.


Original publication USA, Counterpoint, Perseus Books Group, New York, 2003
First UK publication Serpent's Tail, London, 2005
My 5-star edition Mackays of Chatham, 2006

ISBN: 1-85242-467-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-85242-467-1