With Franklin, he plays the part of the All-American Child, but mockingly, as Eva suspects. He is apathetic to everything, seeming alive only when he manages to goad Eva into a rage. He shuns breast milk, does not talk (even though he has learnt how to) until he is three years old, and refuses to be toilet trained. Eva and Kevin face off many times during the sixteen years leading to the apotheosis of his career on that Thursday afternoon, with Eva always the loser.

To Eva's frustration, Franklin remains oblivious to his son's true nature, trying to recreate some fictitious 'American Dream' in his backyard. Kevin, through Eva's eyes, is portrayed as so evil that we shudder as he grows up, his evil nature also expands. And from the moment he sets foot on earth, Eva's life becomes a horror story. But she succumbs to Franklin's entreaties and conceives Kevin. Eva as the propreitor of the highly successful travel guidebook franchise A Wing and A Prayer never wanted a child. She, spirited, independent, liberal, proud of her Armenian heritage and a little contemptuous of her adoptive country: he, more conventional and boringly American. The other part of the letters traces Kevin from his conception up to the fateful Thursday.Īs the story unfolds, we get a picture of Eva and Franklin. One talks of the current time, her travails as the universally shunned mother of the infamous teen: the bereaved parents of Kevin's late classmates have slapped a civil suit on her, which she is fighting in her typically disinterested manner, and visiting her son regularly in the correctional facility where he is incarcerated. Eva's letters are divided into two parts. Eva is the mother of the infamous Kevin Khatchadourian, the architecht of the Gladstone High School massacre. The story is told in epistolary form, through the letters Eva Khatchadourian writes to her absent husband Franklin Plaskett. Reading it is almost like self-torture under hypnotism you don't want to do it, but once you are into it, there's no way to stop. It is not a fast read: even though Lionel Shriver writes beautiful prose, she writes about ugly things. The novel makes us think, long after we finish it. This is one hundred percent correct as far as We Need To Talk About Kevin is concerned.

As a great writer of my native language said: 'The real story is on the unwritten pages' that is, it is the gaps, the pauses and the undercurrents between the characters (which the reader is forced to complete or imagine) which is the mark of great literature. I am a little apprehensive as to how I should begin this review: there are so many things to talk about.įirst of all, I consider this to be truly a great work of literature, not simply 'fiction'.

We need to talk about kevin book review