BOOK REVIEW: we need to talk about kevin by lionel shriver
i want to preface this by saying i googled lionel shriver after reading the book and i don't like what i found so for the sake of this short blog post i will omit any mention of her beyond this very period .
i dont exactly know what compelled me to pick this one up again. the last time i finished WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN about a decade ago i knew immediately that it was one of my favourite novels. i cried so much. this taste for the horrific, though not without a beauty to weave it all together, is a taste that i have long harboured, and will only continue to as much as i read beautifully horrifying books. also motherhood themes. they just get me, i don't know.
this time, i just needed a book to read on the metro, and seeing it on my shelf, knowing that once, long ago, i had decided it a favourite of mine, i guess i figured there would be no harm and no time wasted in picking it up again to see if that decision stood the test of time...
and what a fruitful idea that was. i was able to appreciate the novel with a firmer grasp on Eva, the narrator, but i was also able to decide for myself, more thoughtfully, how much in spite of my aching sympathy i wanted to empathize with her. i won't talk much here about the details of the novel because i think you should experience it for yourself. and also if i talk about it im going to start crying again.
the first time around, i really felt like the narrator was the victim of every mother's inconceivable circumstances, and the second time around, i can see how immune Eva is to her own better judgment. every decision she makes is confronted with its worst case scenario, from deciding to have Kevin, who grows up to become a sociopath (and inevitably, something much worse), to her decision to have another child, Celia, growing up in the very vicinity. every risk is taken by her desire to make her own circumstances better.
and these decisions come at a titanic price.
coating the surface of the story is what some might call overwritten prose (especially for letters to an estranged husband), and because the novel is tackling such sensitive subject matter it really makes you wonder, the reader, how such subject matter could ever dare to make an attempt at being "beautiful" without being tactless. but i disagree. this beauty is poignant, it is confessional, and it is heartfelt from a heart broken beyond repair. more than that, it is truly shocking. my mouth was left agape for so long at so many finely tuned sentences i fear i could have swallowed the book whole. it's like every chapter ends a banger. i don't remember being this provoked the last time.
but at the same time, i am even more familiar with the worst of Eva, and how truly apologetic these letters are, knowing how bad she may have made her situation by choosing to put her needs first. that's not to say that the conclusion of this novel is motherhood is a mistake, but that by jumping into the void, you bear the responsibility to devote your life to whatever you may find.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is not for everyone, and i mean it this time. i think it's very easy to hate this novel, or to approach it lacking faith and expecting to behold a single, uniform message. but the novel is truly unlike any other. it is for those who like horror that is grounded, and for those who do not seek gratuitous ultraviolence, but who catch real-life horrors in a jar and analyze them like poisonous bugs. it is also for those who can suffer the greys, the dull, and the mundane, and can look in every corner of the book, open to the idea of finding something genuinely remarkable.
🐶