We Need to Talk About Kevin
A mother writing to her absent husband about their son, and about whether she ever wanted him at all.
Eva Khatchadourian addresses a sequence of letters to the husband she is separated from, setting down the years that led to her teenage son firing on his classmates. She moves back and forth across her own account: the pregnancy she resented, the infant who would not take her breast, the boy who withheld speech and warmth, and the daughter with whom mothering came without effort. Shriver keeps the reckoning inside one voice, so cause and self-justification never fully separate.
For a clinician, the value lies in how far Eva goes in naming what a mother is not supposed to admit, and in how her hindsight bends every early memory toward the outcome she already knows. She has both the wish to understand her son and every reason to arrange the record in her favour. The two motives sit together and refuse to resolve, which is the point.
First published in 2003. It won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005.
About the author
Lionel Shriver
Lionel Shriver, born in 1957 in Gastonia, North Carolina, is an American author and journalist. She is best known for her novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005 and later reached film audiences. Told through a mother's letters, it examines maternal ambivalence and its aftermath. Across many novels and her regular journalism, Shriver writes with a direct, questioning style. She continues to publish fiction and commentary from her homes in London and New York.
Details
- 2003
- Serpent's Tail
- Serpent's Tail