We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lioner Shriver, Serpent's Tail, 468 pages
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
As soon as I heard the interview with author Lionel Shriver
on the BBC World Book Club podcast, I knew I wanted to read We Need to Talk About Kevin. And when I
finally did, I found it resonated with me and moved me more than any other
novel ever had. The effect was just as powerful, if not more, on the second
reading. An incisive examination of the age-old nature vs. nurture issue, the
novel addresses themes such as parental responsibility, the mother-son
relationship, and most importantly, the choice of becoming a parent in the
first place.
I saw it coming for
nearly sixteen years. (p. 114)
In a series of letters to her absent husband, narrator Eva
Katchadourian recounts the upbringing of her son Kevin, attempting to find the
reason why one Thursday he locked several classmates and a teacher in the
school gymnasium and shot them dead with a crossbow. As a product of a culture
where mothers are held most accountable for their children’s actions, Eva
examines her own conduct and dissects her troubled relationship with Kevin. She
attempts to decode Kevin’s personality and his world view to find a reason –
any reason – why he was moved to commit such an atrocity. Eschewing traditional
counselling, Eva analyses Kevin and herself in writing, both as a form of therapy
and as a self-inflicted punishment. As we follow Kevin’s story and see harmless
pranks evolve into pure, calculating evil, we are forced to wonder whether he
was born that way, or whether his and Eva’s toxic relationship warped his personality,
and thus Eva’s account cannot be trusted. Frustratingly, but also ingeniously,
the novel does not provide a clear-cut answer, and the reader is left to make
what he or she will of the “evidence” recounted in Eva’s letters. Left reeling
from the emotional turmoil in the characters’ lives, the reader is dealt one
final blow when the secret behind Eva’s letters is revealed.
Just about any
stranger could have turned up nine months later. We might as well have left the
door unlocked. (p. 60)
Having read the book years after the aftermath of the
Columbine school shootings, the most relevant issue to me was that of the
choice to become a parent, specifically – a mother. With candour absent from I
think any other book addressing the issue of parenting, We Need to Talk About Kevin gives voice to the fears and concerns
of many women who hesitate about having children, or indeed do not want to take
this step, but feel pressured on various fronts to give in and fulfil this
biological function of the female body. Eva clearly and honestly expresses her
own resentment at her societal demotion from the moment of conception and being
reduced to a biological function: I felt
expendable, throw-away, swallowed by a big biological project that I didn’t
initiate or choose, that produced me but would also chew me up and spit me out.
I felt used. (p. 61). She describes how Kevin, “Mr. Divide-and-Conquer”,
drives a wedge between her and husband Franklin, putting an end to any time
spent alone together and forcing them to take sides in the “war” over his
upbringing. Lest anyone assume that Eva is being petty and selfish, it is worth
naming just a few of the horrifying incidents Kevin was involved in, if not
directly responsible for: a preschooler tempted into scratching her eczema till
she drew blood; spraying Eva’s study – painstakingly wallpapered with maps of
all the places she’d visited before quitting work to become a mother – with
indelible blood-red ink; throwing bricks at cars from an overpass; loosening
the wheel lock of a neighbour boy’s bike; triggering a schoolmate’s eating
disorder; falsely accusing a schoolteacher of sexually abusing him; and most
horrifyingly of all, the loss of his sister’s eye in an incident involving
drain cleaner. Every word and action appears aimed at making others,
particularly his mother, feel intensely uncomfortable: wearing ridiculously
undersized clothing that practically cuts into his flesh, uttering incisively
critical and brutally honest statements at socially awkward moments, even
masturbating loudly at home with the bathroom door open.
Franklin, who appears to love not so much his son as the idea of having a son, a happy family, does
not notice – or pretend not to notice – Kevin’s antisocial behaviour. He flatly
dismisses Eva’s concerns and assumes the fault is all hers, for being a cold
and unapproachable mother. It’s true, Eva did not initially want to be a mother,
and approached the role more as a challenge than as the fulfilment of a
heartfelt wish. She admits to feeling nothing for Kevin immediately following
his birth and many years after. But it’s also true she gets no response from
Kevin, who rejects any affection and stubbornly feigns disinterest in
everything and everyone. Eva’s experience of motherhood is dramatically
different when little Celia – trusting, affectionate and sunny – is born. Indeed,
she admits in her letters that she decided on a second pregnancy just to see
whether happy parenthood is possible, or whether she is just inherently unable
to love a child. Clearly, she isn’t.
Eva may not like or even love Kevin, but she has an inkling
of how he sees the world, and the reader, if not Eva herself, can easily spot
the similarity between some of Eva’s and Kevin’s opinions on society. She has a
strong if not constant feeling of the misery and pointlessness of human
existence, and has more faith in evil than in goodness: In truth, we are bigger, greedier versions of the same eating,
shitting, rutting ruck, hell-bent on disguising from somebody, if only from a
three-year-old, that pretty much all we do is eat and shit and rut. The
secret is that there is no secret. That
is what we really wish to keep from our kids. (...) Kevin must have felt so fiercely
cheated. (p. 170). And indeed, Kevin appears to respond best to Eva when
she is honest with him and does not disguise any unpleasant truths, including the fact that she does not like
him. Tragically and disturbingly, the closest moment they share is when Eva
finally snaps and hits him, making him fall and break his arm. Real love shares more in common with hatred
and rage than it does with geniality and politeness, she notes. For two seconds I felt whole, and like Kevin
Katchadourian’s real mother. I felt close to him. I felt like myself – my true,
unexpurgated self – and I felt we were finally communicating. (p. 232).
Franklin’s cheery, supportive comments ring false to Kevin,
and he does not hide his contempt for his father in a TV interview in the years
following the tragedy he caused. Although he stubbornly hides it, he appears to
actually respect Eva for seeing through his act and striving to know the real
Kevin, instead of just defaulting to a socially dictated pattern of parenthood.
To Eva’s surprise, in the interview Kevin vehemently denies that Eva was a bad
mother, and speaks highly of her accomplishments as a travel writer and
businesswomen, mentioning that he used to sneak off to the bookstore just to
see her travel guides. And when the camera pans to one side, Eva spots on Kevin’s
nightstand in prison – a photograph of herself...
As a reader, I cannot say whether Kevin’s killing spree can
be said to be a result of his toxic relationship with his mother. All I know is
that their relationship is a tortured one, based on a vicious cycle of mutual
rejection and refusing to admit that one needs – if not exactly loves – the other.
This strife may not have informed Kevin’s actions, but it must have influenced
him in some way.
There is no simple answer to the nature vs. nurture problem,
neither in the novel nor in real life. As Eva puts it, whereas the likes of
Franklin look to children to find the answer to the meaning of life, it’s Kevin who has posed [her] Big
Question. (p. 301). The one answer the book does provide is in the open,
honest expression of fears and misgivings about having children, which many
people share but are shamed into concealing by accusations of selfishness and superficiality.
Kevin’s example may be an extreme one, but it can’t be denied that giving birth
is exactly as Eva describes it: an almost foolhardy act of trust that boils
down to letting a stranger into your house.
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