We REALLY Need to Talk about Kevin

SPOILER ALERT * SPOILER ALERT * SPOILER ALERT

This is a thread where us "Kevin" readers can discuss the book and not worry about spoilers.

Here's my bit from the other thread in response to a post there...

Hm, I don't recall particularly disliking Eva when I read "Kevin" but I don't particularly remember liking her either. She was a reluctant mother at first, and Kevin being what he was did not bring out any latent maternal instincts in her. She was very honest about most of this. Kevin is a sociopath and I tend to think it was mostly his wiring. Eva seemed to mother her daughter reasonably normally . . . and there are all kinds of mothers and their children do not turn out to be mass murderers. What blew me away was Kevin's weird attachment to her. I really should read the book again, it's been a few years now. I remember after finishing it I felt the urge to talk about the book with others but couldn't find words.

As my husband notes to me: they used to blame schizophrenia on bad mothering in the 1950s . . .

I wanted to add that it was interesting (sad, of course) to see the marriage disintegrate; they were so in love at the beginning.

As a parent myself, what I came away with that we, as parents, have far less power and control over our children than we imagine we do. That is downright scary.

Here's the wiki entry for antisocial personality disorder (a.k.a. a sociopathy). I'm no expert, of course, but a lot of it fits.

avaland - Believe it are not, I read this entire book one evening at Borders (I'm a fast reader). I was completely unprepared for the for the ending and utterly freaked out by the entire book. I did not buy it. I read Eva as someone who is in shock, hence the somewhat depersonalized tone to the book. The only book that I've read recently that creeped me out as much as this is The Little Friend. Incidentally, I know a family with two grown child children. The daughter is normal and well-adjusted. The son has the potential to be a Kevin. This situation has been extremely hard on the family, not to mention scary.

urania1, the only book I've read recently (in the past several years) that packed a similar punch for me was Joyce Carol Oates's Rape a Love Story which turns one's ideas of justice on end (imo). There were certainly other books in other eras of my life that produced powerful effects but perhaps without the horror.

There has been much said about Lionel Shriver not being a mother and that's what's behind the tone of the book, but I don't think I buy that. Like I said before, there are all kinds of mothers and their kids don't grow up to be extreme sociopaths.

The more I think about Kevin the more I realize that his was not a sudden action but a carefully thought out plan. Through his actions he had his victims exactly where he wanted them at a specific time in order to carry out his plan. His use of a silent weapon seems to have been a part of his plan too. Committing the crime just before his 16th birthday meant he got a lighter sentence than if he had been older. I am wondering now just how long he had been plotting his evil deeds.

I read this book a few months ago. I really did dislike Eva at first because I felt that she was very self-absorbed. I thought this because her letters to her husband were much more like a diary than correspondence.

(((POSSIBLE SPOILERS)))

About halfway through the book I figured out why this might be (aside of her being very self-absorbed), and a couple hundred pages later, these suspicions were verified. I really don't think that the author should have waited so long to reveal that important fact, because it makes the difference between the narrator seeming sympathetic and hopelessly self-absorbed.

!!!***POSSIBLE SPOILERS***!!!

When I first read this book I was really expecting not to like Eva but I took to her almost immediately.

Instead I really took against her husband and found him to be a bit of a bully to her. He obviously loved Kevin very much but I think his refusal to see the bad in him, when he was so quick to see it in Eva, was part of the problem with Kevin and contributed to his behaviour all through his life.

I thought Eva really got a raw deal, from the second she was pregnant she was expected to change her behaviour, and that can be hard. One glass of wine and a little bit of dancing and her husband was treating her like she was knocking back poison and running a marathon. Plus she was the main breadwinner, so she didn't fit into the nice little stay at home wife catagory but she found motherhood hard so she doesn't fit into the 80's expectation of a woman who had it all either.

I liked her honesty in saying how hard she found motherhood and I could understand how she found things easier and different with Celia. And it was just a mirror image of her husband rejecting Celia for being the easier child to love. I forget the husbands name, but I didn't see the plot twist coming and thought he had decided to take Celia and blame his wife in the same way the rest of the town had decided to blame her, in the wake of the civil suit against her for damages.

I didn't see the plot twist coming and thought he had decided to take Celia and blame his wife in the same way the rest of the town had decided to blame her.

I saw the plot twist coming just by the fact that, in her letters, she never asks him any questions or says anything that reveals where he and Celia are or what they might be doing, i.e. "I hope you like living in Portland" or "Is Celia adjusting to her new school?" At first, the lack of these statements made me think that she was just too absorbed in her own situation to ask, but later it made me realize that there was probably something else going on.

I also figured the husband was dead; somehow I hoped Celia had been taken away by Child Welfare or something. But thinking I had it figured out in no way prepared me for the gruesome details. weener, I think if the author had told us earlier that the husband was dead, the ending wouldn't have had the impact that it did.

No way did I believe the ending where sweet lil Kevin wants to live with Mommy when he gets out. The tragedy is that Eva does believe; but what else does she have left in her life?

I was completely overwhelmed by this book - the most emotionally harrowing thing I've ever read. I was astounded by my reaction and very admiring of the author.
That said I did feel that the mother's thoughts and feelings were not realistsic. I had a bet with myself that Mr Lionel Shriver was not a parent. Eventually I discovered that Ms Lionel Shriver was, indeed, not a parent.

That Eva is able to function at all after such trauma might truly be fiction. How would one get through something like that? I can't remember, how much time has elapsed since the murders when she is writing?

#10 - I'm not sure exactly how much time has passed but Kevin is in prison and there has been a civil trial with Eva when some of the parents took action against her for compensation, so I would think quite a bit of time has gone by.

I'm kind of interested now that it keeps being mentioned that Lionel Shriver is not a parent so her portrayal of Eva is unrealistic. She's not a teenage boy either but nobody has said her portrayal of Kevin is unrealistic.

Authors observe and imaging things all the time and I have a feeling from reading interviews that she has used some of her observations of her own mother in writing Eva.

Her mothers reaction to finding out she was pregnant with Shriver's older brother is apparently legendary in her family for the rage she felt, and Shriver also stated that her mother advised her that having children would affect her relationship with their father and the implications of that were that it would be in a negative rather than positive way.

She says that to admit feelings of dissatisfaction with motherhood or a difficulty to bond or even sometimes like your children is tantamount to admitting child abuse these days and she wanted to explore the feelings she knows her mother experienced, without turning any of her children into multiple murderers.

>11 QueenOfDenmark: now that you mention it, the time frame must be between a year and two years? Kevin acted on the 16th birthday and doesn't he talk about being transferred to an 'adult' prison soon?

Your other points are astute, of course. I have a dear friend whose mother is the least 'maternal' of any I've heard of and none of them have become a danger to themselves or society. If we haven't all been mothers, we certainly all have had one.

What Shriver says in her last paragraph is very telling because this is exactly what she is doing in the book. As much as I don't remember particularly disliking or liking Eva, I do remember sympathizing with her at various times. Her honesty touched me. The idea of motherhood has been undergoing re-evaluation since the 1960s. I imagine the glorification of motherhood as being part survival mechanism for women who really had few, if any, choices to becoming one.

I was just thinking of the various nonfiction books that have been out on the subject over the past few decades (and I do have some of those) but how this one provocative and disturbing novel can get us all talking easily (oh, how I love fiction).

Eva scared me because her reactions were sometimes close to some of mine.; they seemed totally believeable to me. I have two kids with a treatable but hard to diagnose problem which led to emotional problems as well. Sometimes I would get sooooo frustrated......with doctors, teachers, the ex, myself, even the kids themselves who were also highly frustrated.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I've read reviews comparing this book to Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child on the same subject. I've not yet read it, but at some point in the future, plan on doing so.

#13 I have read The Fifth Child and it is odd and creepy and has some similar points and some big differences but the basics can be said to be the same - a couple have a baby who seems unlovable and unloving right from the start, so nature before nurture has affected him. I would recommend reading it when you can although it isn't a book that I particularly enjoyed, just one that is hard to ignore.

#11 Jody
When I read the book, I had no idea about Shriver's experiences with parenting. I had no issue with any of Eva's negative thoughts towards parenting - I still have them myself. What Eva lacked, IMO, was the fascination with which a parent views a child.
Despite this...
I LOVED THE BOOK.

I just now finished this book. It will take awhile to work through my feelings about it, but I just have to say, I really hated the father. He was so in denial and treated Eva like shit, especially around Kevin's issues. At times I couldn't take his character seriously, no one would be that dense, would they????

I figured out the ending quite early on, that he was dead, not just somewhere else. He would have been involved in the civil suit, etc. if he were alive.

I just wanted to scream all the way through -- GET THIS KID INTO THERAPY and while you're at it, do some yourselves!

It was quite well written and kept me reading almost nonstop. But it was the sort of experience akin to watching a train wreck, can't say I enjoyed it but I couldn't stop watching.

And then, like a trainwreck, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

I wonder even if Kevin had gotten into therapy, would the result have been any different? Can therapy help sociopaths?

Do any of you think you will want to reread the book at a later time? I am so glad that I read it, but I can't imagine doing it again.

Well at least a therapist might have been able to identify it and some preventive action could have been taken. That clueless father might have had something to consider. She might have thought more about having another child exposed to that behavior. Sometimes just naming can be powerful and transformative.

I doubt I'd re-read this one.

Very good points teelgee. Therapy may not have changed Kevin a bit, but might have had changed the outcome if it made the parents confront the reality.

That's all of course if Kevin had told the truth in therapy. He showed great skill at lying and hiding the truth.

I have not read "Kevin" yet, but I found an article in our weekend paper reviewing Lionel Shriver's work. It suggested that "Kevin" owes something to The Accidental Tourist. Anybody care to comment?

Kevin was incredible manipulative; I would imagine he could be the same with most therapists. I think it would've taken a mighty clever one to see through him.

I don't think I'd reread it.

18 Don't laugh now, but a friend who had read Kevin at about the same time I did (a couple of years ago) brought me an article from (the NYer? maybe) which made the case that our 'esteemed' President is a sociopath. It was an interesting piece.

>21 avaland: Uh, yeah.

#20 - in what did it suggest that. I've read both books but long enough ago that I'm not getting an immediate connection between the two but your comment has really gotten me interested about it.

#20 merry10: I can't think of anything they have in common.
I've thought a bit longer and still nothing.

Forgive me if this has been posted somewhere else already, but here is a podcast of a discussion with Shriver about the book (50 minutes).

For the record, I thought the book was chilling and depressing, but I recall not being 100% convinced of the narrator's voice. But it's been a couple of years...

Follies of a familial scenario is the review which makes the link. I've read The Accidental Tourist many years ago but not Kevin and was curious.

Not a bit surprised to see this thread. Of all the books I've ever read Kevin just may be the one that has kept me thinking and needing to discuss it ever since (and yes, I picked out the connections with Lessing's book almost immediately). Long may such a great book keep provoking us! Isn't this what reading's all about at its very best?

#13, 14, and 27, thanks for pointing out the similarities to The Fifth Child. I had read it a long time ago and didn't note the connections.