We Need to Talk

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver (Harper Perennial, 2003)

Do you believe me that I picked out this book to read next before Aurora happened? The idea of reading a novel about the aftermath (ish) of a mass shooting seemed a little much to handle, but I pushed on. And was in the thick of it when the Oak Creek shooting occurred. All of which could send me off on a diatribe about violence and weapons and cavalier disregard for the sanctity of human life and and and.

But no. This novel has too much to say on its own. The Post-Birthday World is one of my favorite novels - although no one I've foisted it on has enjoyed it as much as I did - but this one is the award-winner. And it was time to tackle something difficult.

It's November 2000, about 18 months after Eva's son changed their worlds forever by murdering a handful of classmates and two school staff members, about a week before Columbine. And Eva shares her story in epistolary fashion, in a series of letters to her estranged husband. The result is three narratives that unfold over about six months, with the final letter in April 2001. The first is world events; remember that election? and how it dominated everything? The second takes us back in time, as Eva details the couple's decision to have a baby, and the child's early years. The third is also current, about her ongoing relationship with Kevin, her visits to him in the juvenile prison upstate, as she strives to come to terms - to the extent such a phrase even makes sense - with his horrific acts, and her part in them.

Never has anything made me so scared about the prospect of having a child. From even before his birth, Eva was uneasy about Kevin. And Kevin made everyone uneasy except her husband, who desperation to adore his own son is so touchingly naive as seen through Eva's eyes. Whether or not Kevin was really a sociopath from Day One, how terrifying to consider not loving your own child.

And then some sort of trigger switched inside me. Eva does this complicated dance, of assuming all the responsibility for Kevin and his actions, and simultaneously abjuring it in favor of an argument that sort of runs, "I tried to warn you about him." It made me uncomfortable, which I can only assume was Shriver's intent. As are the growing signs that maybe Eva really is to blame, that maybe Kevin has always, desperately, sought his mother's love and affection. That maybe his malicious attacks on people's passions were both a way of destroying what he didn't have and couldn't abide in others. And even more so, a cry for his mom to notice and love him.

I feel terribly inarticulate trying to get at what I mean. Besides, did I really just place the responsibility for all these murders on this poor woman's shoulders? Plenty of people have awful parents who they fear don't really love them, and the vast majority of these people do not become killers at age 15. It's pretty much bullshit to absolve Kevin of any responsibility. And yet, I fear he just wanted to impress her. Although impress isn't quite the right word.

Before I fall too deeply down a rabbit hole, let me just say what I probably should have said in summary from the very start: this novel disquieted me in ways that few novels have. I will be thinking about Kevin for a long time to come.