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octavia_cade 's review for:
We Need to Talk about Kevin
by Lionel Shriver
I'm so glad I don't have children. Never has motherhood looked so unattractive - and I never thought it an attractive prospect to begin with. Sometimes, no matter what you do, you get a Kevin, and after all the tiresome business of raising a kid, you're deprived of even the tiniest bit of reward.
I was interested to see in the end material - this edition includes an interview with the author - that over the years Shriver's noted two very clear responses to the book. One, that Eva's poor job of motherhood has turned an otherwise unextraordinary boy into a killer. And two, which is the very clear impression I got, that Kevin was somehow wrong from the get-go, and that only his mother had the sense to see it. (Dad the Dupe indeed - the strongest emotional response I experienced while reading this book was the ongoing desire to reach into page and slap the stupid out of Franklin.)
To be honest, that first perception, that it's all Eva's fault, is one I have so little sympathy with because it seems to be rooted in the expectation that motherhood is an unendingly joyous experience and that anyone who disagrees with that is one step short of evil. One of the reasons I've never wanted to be a parent is that it just looks so goddamn tedious - with the best will in the world, having to read Goodnight Moon over and over would drive even the sanest person to drink. No surprise that Eva isn't thrilled to go from international travel and self-fulfilment to changing the diapers of a six year old who refuses to learn to use the loo. She does come across, superficially, as grossly unsympathetic in her experience of motherhood, but that only makes me appreciate her more. Not perhaps a nice character, but one I readily identify with. And I think that the general unsympathy (if that's even a word) that permeates this book is the best thing about it. There's no polite veneer of dishonesty to make the swallowing easier. I do think there are pacing problems in the first third - the book seems to take an age to get going - but over the whole that constant repetition of ruthless honesty becomes enormously compelling.
I was interested to see in the end material - this edition includes an interview with the author - that over the years Shriver's noted two very clear responses to the book. One, that Eva's poor job of motherhood has turned an otherwise unextraordinary boy into a killer. And two, which is the very clear impression I got, that Kevin was somehow wrong from the get-go, and that only his mother had the sense to see it. (Dad the Dupe indeed - the strongest emotional response I experienced while reading this book was the ongoing desire to reach into page and slap the stupid out of Franklin.)
To be honest, that first perception, that it's all Eva's fault, is one I have so little sympathy with because it seems to be rooted in the expectation that motherhood is an unendingly joyous experience and that anyone who disagrees with that is one step short of evil. One of the reasons I've never wanted to be a parent is that it just looks so goddamn tedious - with the best will in the world, having to read Goodnight Moon over and over would drive even the sanest person to drink. No surprise that Eva isn't thrilled to go from international travel and self-fulfilment to changing the diapers of a six year old who refuses to learn to use the loo. She does come across, superficially, as grossly unsympathetic in her experience of motherhood, but that only makes me appreciate her more. Not perhaps a nice character, but one I readily identify with. And I think that the general unsympathy (if that's even a word) that permeates this book is the best thing about it. There's no polite veneer of dishonesty to make the swallowing easier. I do think there are pacing problems in the first third - the book seems to take an age to get going - but over the whole that constant repetition of ruthless honesty becomes enormously compelling.