ALiEM Bookclub: We Need to Talk About Kevin

we-need-to-talk-about-kevinWe Need to Talk About Kevin. Yes we do, I’m afraid. You may have been (like me, for many years) avoiding reading this novel by Lionel Shriver, ducking away from discussions and avoiding reviews, having got wind of the gist of the story through the mass media.

To summarise the book, We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver is written in the form of letters penned by Eva Khatchadourian to her estranged husband Franklin. These missives form a chronological examination of her life before and after the entrance of their son Kevin into their lives (or perhaps, more accurately, the invasion), and they follow the painful path through his childhood, dissecting the family relationships that shape his development along the way. There is no secret about the main event. Kevin, at the tender and cleverly calculated age of 15 years and 362 days, commits mass murder in his school gym.

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