Scan barcode
A review by jennifer
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
5.0
I've read two striking things by Lionel Shriver this year: her standout essay in Meghan Daum's anthology of childfree writers, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed, and a review of Nell Zink's first two novels in the Weekend Financial Times that perfectly captured both the brilliance and frustration of reading a Nell Zink novel. It seemed about time that I got around to reading We Need to Talk About Kevin since it had been lingering on my Kindle for years.
I suppose part of the reluctance to read the book is that everyone knows what it's about--a teenager goes on a killing spree at his high school--and given how often this kind of thing happens in real life, it's not that tempting to wallow in the same subject in my leisure time. But from the start Shriver does tempt you by somehow turning an epistolary novel into a thriller (the whole thing is written in letters to her husband following the horrible event, referred to simply as "Thursday"). And by thriller I don't mean she sensationalizes mass murder but rather turns the ordinary events of a marriage into a page-turner through the remarkably sharp and self-aware voice of the narrator, Eva.
I never saw the movie based on this book, but now I feel compelled if only to see how Hollywood treats the blazingly honest but not always sympathetic Eva.
I suppose part of the reluctance to read the book is that everyone knows what it's about--a teenager goes on a killing spree at his high school--and given how often this kind of thing happens in real life, it's not that tempting to wallow in the same subject in my leisure time. But from the start Shriver does tempt you by somehow turning an epistolary novel into a thriller (the whole thing is written in letters to her husband following the horrible event, referred to simply as "Thursday"). And by thriller I don't mean she sensationalizes mass murder but rather turns the ordinary events of a marriage into a page-turner through the remarkably sharp and self-aware voice of the narrator, Eva.
I never saw the movie based on this book, but now I feel compelled if only to see how Hollywood treats the blazingly honest but not always sympathetic Eva.