We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Last month’s Book Club pick: We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver. Honestly, I had a lot of preconceptions about what this book was about and, since I always read the last sentence of a novel but never the back, I really thought I had a handle on it.

Honestly, nothing could have prepared me.

A (new) friend described the novel as “earth-shattering”; I would have to agree. It was so well written, with genuine intrigue and mystery, that I felt compelled to find out exactly what Kevin did that needed any more talking about. The characters seem …real. Eva, as cold-fish mom, was in equal turns adorable and abhorrent. Her self-flagellating style (as the entire book is written in letters to her husband, Franklin) is so brutally honest that I can’t help but wonder: is she exaggerating? does she really think this? is she making herself to be worse than she really is? All the other characters are seen through Eva’s eyes, and yet she paints them with the same unyielding honesty so they too seem true.
In the end, what happens takes a back seat to what hasn't happened yet. The plot is a vehicle to asking the unanswerable question: had they talked about Kevin – really talked about him – would it have made a difference? Was he born that way? Was Eva? Could either of them have been more than what they were? Could either have been any less?

An excellent book and an absolute must read.