"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.
