We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel

"Impossible to put down. . . . Who, in the end, needs to talk about Kevin? Maybe we all do.” — Boston Globe

Acclaimed author Lionel Shriver's gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry

Shriver’s resonant story of a mother’s unsettling quest to understand her teenage son’s deadly violence, her own ambivalence toward motherhood, and the explosive link between them reverberates with the haunting power of high hopes shattered by dark realities.

Eva never really wanted to be a mother—and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

Like Shriver’s charged and incisive later novels, including So Much for That and The Post-Birthday World, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a piercing, unforgettable, and penetrating exploration of violence, family ties, and responsibility.

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Published Jul 3, 2006

400 pages

Average rating: 6.68

95 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

Sammi3033
Oct 29, 2024
1/10 star
Borrrriinnnggg. I didn’t sign up to read letters to Franklin for an entire book.
margardenlady
Dec 27, 2023
4/10 stars
This book was full of unlikeable characters, who were well characterized. The premise of the book - letters written by the mother of a high school mass murderer to her husband about her life since the murders (ominously listed as 'that Thursday' throughout the book) and her discomfiture at parenting this difficult child - was at once compelling and repellant. Not a single happy thought survives for long in this gloomy epistolary novel. The idea I took most powerfully from the writing is, quite frankly,something I'd never given much thought before: what are the familial after-effects of such a killing rampage? The writing was gloriously rich and full of strong words, but even that didn't redeem the book from my perspective. Couldn't Kevin have had some remorse? Couldn't someone have experienced love that transcended all?
Thank you to all the previous review writers - it was your descriptions that allowed me to stick it out and finish the book. I couldn't have endured the meandering letters without the promise that some questions would be answered by the end - like where is the husband? what really happened? I felt like a driver rubbernecking at the sight of the highway crash, but I needed the closure of knowing.
JShrestha
Aug 25, 2023
8/10 stars
This is an extremely long enduring read but very good. It is from the view of the mother and the very real struggle to love her child and guilt she felt.
PetraD
Aug 16, 2023
10/10 stars
Definitely goes to my favourite books list. I loved the main character Eva. She was so witty and brutally honest with herself, I was sad to let her go at the end of the book. Can't wait to get back to it
Quinflock
Jul 12, 2023
Shocking twist.

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