We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver

If being a high school teacher is not enough to put one off ever wanting to join the multitudes of folks in the parenthood club, then this book is the thing to finally push one over the edge.

The dreaded question to all parents out there: what would you do if your child was involved in a school shooting? Would you blame yourself? Would your life be able to continue? In this book, Eva writes letters to her husband after their son, Kevin, commits mass murder.

“I thought at the time that I couldn't be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that's a common conceit, that you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.”

― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

There is no nice way to say this. This book is devastating. If happy reads are your thing, don't go near this one. But if you want to see a perfect example of a tortured character, then look no further. While I am not a mother (thank Merlin, because this book would have given me a whole new set of things to worry about if I were), I could feel Eva's pain throughout this book. I could feel her frustration and her sense of hopelessness. While I could not condone her actions in some cases, I could understand them. Maybe it was the first person narrative (it is told in letters) that made her character so relatable, or maybe it is just that, at some point in time, everyone has been in a hopeless situation, because she really felt like a real person. Her side of the story was also fascinating as she is an unreliable narrator. Just how unreliable is up to the reader to determine.

“...trying to be a good mother may be as distant from being a good mother as trying to have a good time is from truly having one.”

― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

And Kevin... What all I could say about Kevin! But I won't. If you are interested in this one, I will leave it to you decide about him.

This book raises interesting themes: the well tested discussion between nature and nurture, parenthood, and what causes evil. I liked how there were no conclusive answers (it would have been very presumptuous for there to have been), but I loved how I got to see these questions from 'the other side'. I also had to agree that society does tend to blame the parents, particularly the mothers, when things go wrong with the child.

I spent quite a while in front of my computer, thinking about how I would rate this book (because we all know how important Goodreads ratings are! - that is sarcasm, in case it doesn't translate well in print). It was not enjoyable in the traditional sense. It is very hard to return from a nightmarish journey and say it was fun. But this was truly a brilliantly constructed book. I loved it for the language, and I loved it for taking me to a kind of hell I hope to never experience in real life. I decided to ate this 5 stars.

This is the 56th book I have read for the 2015 TBR Pile Reading challenge.