I need to "talk about Kevin" with someone. PLEASE. Spoilers.

[lexxasaurus]

I liked the book, as well as you can "like" this type of story. I didn't expect the twist at the end either so if that makes you naive, I'm right there with ya. It was so horrific, and it really did change so many of the phrases she'd used, the tone she took and the way she viewed the past.

I found it hard to get emotionally involved through the first bit of the book BUT despite that I could not set it down. I read it in a weekend and it stuck with me for a while. I might actually have to reread it a second time.

[rageragerage]

Whew. It's hard to talk about almost. It took me forever to read because I so strongly disliked the way it was written (the 'letters') and all of the characters. People would ask how I was liking it and I would roll my eyes. But once I finished it, I was really glad that I pushed through.

The last few chapters were so hard, and so awful, and I didn't see the Franklin/Celia part coming at all. The massacre scene was so detailed that I can picture it so clearly.

I don't think I would recommend it to anybody, other than for my selfish desire to analyze it was somebody else.

All of that to say I feel ya.

[just]

I'm about to read your post but I have to say I posted this EXACT post when I finished the book. No one I know in real life has ever read it, so I'm always ravenous to talk about it when it comes up on here.

Back in a bit when I've read the post.

[just]

OK so ....

I thought the book was a masterpiece. Everyone I've ever known (in pretend internet world) found it impactful, even if they hated it.

The characters were so well crafted - I think when you hate/understand.but.dont.relate.to a character, that's a great sign of wonderful writing, and to me, that was everyone except the daughter. I could see myself falling into so many of those reactions/actions (not the son's stuff).

I didn't see the twist coming. I am naive, but damn I never imagined that level of violence and it broke me. I read it on a plane, while I was by myself. I sobbed for the last hour, and got off the flight wanting to talk about the book.

Although my friends know that the book really impacted me, I don't recommend any of my parent friends read it. For me, it's my greatest fear, and the writing while it takes a single journey to the final point, is very realistic. All my mom-friends are very sensitive about this stuff so I don't think they'd be able to take this.

As crazy as it sounds, this book pushed me over the edge about having kids. I'm not a naturally maternal person, and while I'd hope/expect to be more empathetic than Eva, this book spooked me more than I'd like to admit.

I LOVE talking to people about this book.

I liked the movie ... I think it did a good job and it seems that TS was born to play this role, but it didn't have nearly the impact of the book, especially when it came to the twist.

[just]

Sept 22, 2014 22:56:54 GMT -5 rageragerage said:

Whew. It's hard to talk about almost. It took me forever to read because I so strongly disliked the way it was written (the 'letters') and all of the characters. People would ask how I was liking it and I would roll my eyes. But once I finished it, I was really glad that I pushed through.

The last few chapters were so hard, and so awful, and I didn't see the Franklin/Celia part coming at all. The massacre scene was so detailed that I can picture it so clearly.

I don't think I would recommend it to anybody, other than for my selfish desire to analyze it was somebody else.

All of that to say I feel ya.

Yes! The recommendation thing is so hard. After 4 years, all I want to do is talk about this in person with someone, but I Won't recommend it to anyone with young kids or trying for kids...I honestly think it would fuck them up.

I'm so glad I know where good bacon is

[just]

For me, I really changed the way I view these types of scenarios in real-life. I do try to see it from the parental view now and am MUCH less quick to blame parents.

I also have never gotten over the Celia eye/end thing. While I think it was a wonderfully crafted novel, I do feel that the fact that she had DS made her infallible in the reader's eye which was sort of a cop out. I feel that the author needed a single innocent soul in this book full of flawed characters and the only way she could do it was with DS - which is a little lazy and emotionally manipulative.

[just]

And now I'm being that girl talking WAY too much about a very old book ....

[game blouses]

This was one of those books that stuck with me for years. When I read the part where she comes home after the massacre, I shrieked and threw the book across the room. It hadn't occured to me that they would die, though I had an uneasy feeling about Celia the whole time.

[FastHands]

I really really loved this book. The fact that it's almost uncomfortable to say that just shows how powerful it really is. It is so real and raw in a way rhat doesn't happen too often in fiction.

[game blouses]

Sept 23, 2014 8:57:00 GMT -5 Que? said:

Sept 23, 2014 8:21:43 GMT -5 everyjuan said:

Que?

You make an excellent point, everyjuan, about having a parent who lived in their own head like that. I think Kevin was exactly the same and two people like that probably can't ever have a relationship with meaning.

Well said. I appreciated that they were doomed to spend the rest of their lives together doing what they hated - Kevin talking to his mother, Eva talking to her son. They hated each other because they were so similar.

[jlt19]

I had no idea Celia had DS. Did it say that? I honestly don't think I knew she had any kind of disability, but I did read it a few years ago, so I may have forgotten.

I'm in agreement about most of your book. It took a lot to get through the first 2/3's but it all came together and made sense. I had no clue about the twist, but did assume something more horrific than just the school massacre had happened.

[edithbouvierbeale]

Loved this book! It was so impact full and wonderfully developed... I felt like it had so much depth it was almost bottomless. I pondered it for so long after I read it. I enjoyed the movie, also. I'm a huge Tilda Swinton fan. It was just something else. Scary.

[FastHands]

I have a thing for unreliable narrators -- I think I found this book by browsing that tag on goodreads. I mean, how often in life do you get a complete, unadulterated story about ANYTHING, ler alone something this intense and also personal/emotional?

I have a degree in science, but I always say I learned more critical thinking in my freshman english lit course. It was Irisj & British fiction, where unreliable narrators are used more frequently. After Catholic HS where questioning what you read/learn isn't always celebrated, it was a well-timed lesson.

[acuore]

This is one of my favorite books of all time, as hard as it is to get through emotionally.  I think what I appreciate the most (aside from the character of Eva, who I think is a brilliant construction, as unlikable as she) is that the question of "why" is never answered.  Why is kevin the way he is?  Was it just the way he was born, or was it somehow Franklin's or Eva's doing?

Lionel Shriver was able to so exactly replicate the mental process people go through when things like this happen in real life: they cast around desperately to find a "why" (usually blaming the parents, as with Adam Lanza, the Virginia Tech shooter, the Columbine killings), but in the end, there just isn't a single, clear answer to why some kids go so completely off the rails and do terrible, evil things.  This is part of what makes things like this so terrifying, especially, I think, to parents.  

Interestingly, i read at the time the book came out that the author wrote it in a period in which she was trying to decide if she wanted to have a child or not.  She ultimately decided against.  

[acuore]

Sept 23, 2014 9:52:01 GMT -5 Que? said:

Sept 23, 2014 9:43:56 GMT -5 everyjuan said:

I thought it was really interesting on the author's part that Eva had a copy of Robin Hood waiting for him on his bed. Wasn't that book what sparked his interest in archery? And it was the only thing he ever said he liked. I am probably reading too much into it, but it made me wonder if that was her way of backtracking/starting over from that point in his childhood. It was unsettling and spooky, though. "Here's your favorite book, which made you want to pick up a bow and arrow! Which, by the way, you murdered 11 people with later in life."

I thought about this so much. Does she want to attempt to be the mother she never was? Is she trying to just hold on
to the last thing she has left? Does she finally understand him?
I think she's lonely, and alone and wants him on her island. At least he knows her and vice versa and that might be comforting after everything that happened.

Interesting - I remember thinking when i finished the book that it was a kind of penance she was doing.  She seemed to have accepted some sort of responsibility for who/what Kevin was - not necessarily because she has been a "bad" mother, but at the least because she had brought him into the world - and her way of atoning for her sin, so to speak, was to have to face him and be confronted by him every day.  

[acuore]

Sept 23, 2014 9:50:00 GMT -5 @lcap said:

Here's another thing that I wonder. Shriver herself doesn't have children and apparently never wanted them. So I wonder if she did have children, if she would have written the novel differently. As a mother, it's hard for me to imagine not falling completely in love with my newborn. There are few things more delicious in this world than rocking your sleeping baby on your chest and feeling their soft, soft cheeks and puffball hair. I think it's biologically driven in most people. So I wonder if she had had that experience or similar ones, if she would have written the character of Eva differently.

I read an interview with the author around the time the book came out, in which she said she wrote this book in part to work through the question of whether or not she did want to have a child.  She ultimately decided no.  

I do agree that this probably isn't a book a parent would write, although not because I think everyone that has ever had a newborn is so in love they can't imagine not being able to bond with or love her/her.  There are cases of people who never bond with their children, and I suspect that it happens a lot more than we realize, as it is not socially acceptable to say you don't like or love your child.  Eva is an example of this - she tries to see like a "normal" mother, and even her own husband won't accept that she doesn't love Kevin the way a mother should.  

What makes the boom interesting, though, is that it is not as simple as "Eva is broken, and so can't love her son like a normal mother."  Instead, it asks if there isn't something wrong or broken in Kevin from the very beginning that makes him impossible to love.  Is there such a thing as a "Bad Seed" and, if so, is it reasonable to expect the mother of that child to love him like she would a "normal" (non-sociopathic) child? 

[rageragerage]

Sept 23, 2014 9:54:32 GMT -5 kevin arnold said:

Sept 23, 2014 9:51:27 GMT -5 intentionalsnarkshark said:

I keep imagining kevin arnold in the background of this thread like this:

That's why I'm so sticky.

One of the many reasons...

[acuore]

Sept 23, 2014 10:11:39 GMT -5 everyjuan said:

I was thinking how terrifying it would be to live with someone who committed the crimes that Kevin did, especially since we don't know if he ever changed. I don't know how it would be possible to live without looking over your shoulder constantly. However, Eva already did that for 16 years, and as far as being harmed is concerned, I truly believe that what she saw/went through was worse than death.

Yes, my impression was that he "spared" Eva not because he somehow felt closer to her, but because he hated her the most of all, and it was a way of punishing her.  I did spend a lot of time trying to figure out why he hated her so much, though.  I mean, he obviously didn't like or love anybody, but he seemed to have a particular loathing for her from his infancy on.  

[game blouses]

I felt like Eva already felt dead, at least the important part of her. The independent, traveling woman who resisted being shackled to Kevin and motherhood died when he shot that first arrow, and she ended up being linked to him forever, both in infamy and in visitation. She can't even leave town because she'd be too far from him.

[game blouses]

Sept 23, 2014 10:17:05 GMT -5 acuore said:

Sept 23, 2014 10:11:39 GMT -5 everyjuan said:

I was thinking how terrifying it would be to live with someone who committed the crimes that Kevin did, especially since we don't know if he ever changed. I don't know how it would be possible to live without looking over your shoulder constantly. However, Eva already did that for 16 years, and as far as being harmed is concerned, I truly believe that what she saw/went through was worse than death.

Yes, my impression was that he "spared" Eva not because he somehow felt closer to her, but because he hated her the most of all, and it was a way of punishing her.  I did spend a lot of time trying to figure out why he hated her so much, though.  I mean, he obviously didn't like or love anybody, but he seemed to have a particular loathing for her from his infancy on.  

He absolutely wanted to punish her. He killed everyone in the cruelest way possible - finally playing with Celia because she worshiped him, shooting Franklin in the back and groin to degrade his manhood, and the kids and teachers in the "awards assembly." And in a way, it was all for Eva to see, and she knew it.

[iamali]

I only made it a quarter of the way through this book and stopped because I despised the writing and characters. I've known for a long time what happens, but this post makes me want to pick it up again.