My review of ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’, by Lionel Shriver.

 Eva, Kevin’s mother narrates the story in a series of letters to her estranged husband Franklin. Their son, Kevin Khachaturian, murdered seven students who attended his high-school, a cafeteria worker and a teacher.
The novel explains Kevin’s upbringing and childhood in the eyes of his unmaternal mother, perhaps as a way to try and understand why he murdered his fellow classmates and staff at his high-school. It also portrays the life his mother Eva has now after the massacre, how she avoids certain people at supermarkets so that she won’t get abuse, how she had to move from her big house to a small flat, her struggles as a parent and her lack of maternal instinct, to name a few.
Overall I thought the book was fantastic, as not only does it
it also offers an insight into the mind of a psychopath, highlighting the age-old subject of nature V nurture.  

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'We need to talk about Kevin', is narrated through the voice of Eva Khachaturian in a series of letters addressed to her estranged husband Franklin. It begins describing their life before they had a child, how she used to travel around the globe with her successful company and how happy they were together, which contrasts to Eva repeatedly referring to what happened on that ’Thursday’, which instantly sets an ominous tone to the novel.
It is rather clear from the start that Eva doesn’t want to have a child, she enjoys the endless freedom she gets from owning her own company and travelling around the world without any responsibility of taking care of an infant, but decides to settle down and start a family because Franklin wants a child. Eva is of Armenian descent and informs Franklin that if the child is boy he has to take her last name and if it is a girl, she can take his last name, to which he reluctantly agrees.

When Kevin Khachaturian is born Eva describes his lack of affection towards her and also her distaste towards him, she even goes as far as to say he cries all day everyday when she is looking after him on purpose, in comparison to when the baby is with Franklin. As a reader, I could see how this is an extremely difficult time for Eva, nothing can truly prepare you for motherhood, but I feel that this is the case with Eva, she doesn't really want to be a mother and therefore, may have displayed a lack of affection towards Kevin, leading him to seek affection with his father; becoming a mother is a shock to the system and Eva clearly was not expecting it to be as turbulent as it turned out to be.

During Kevin’s childhood he immediately begins to display signs of abnormal behaviour; when he is in Kindergarten he breaks an expensive tea set which belonged to a classmate so that everyone copies to the dismay of the child’s parents, but the incident with Violetta was one that truly unnerved me. Kevin is found in the toilet with Violetta, a young girl who suffers extensively from eczema and finds it difficult to stop itching her burning skin. Eva implies that Kevin co-ursed Violetta into caving into to her desire to itch which made her skin break and bleed, although there is no hard evidence that he did. However, the way she describes Violetta’s reaction as being filled with ’plain enjoyment’ which made her appear 'wilder' and ’more primitive’, it hints that Kevin was the culprit and that she had 'itched' and she’d ’given in.’
Eva explains how Kevin would leave excrement after she had just changed his 'diaper', which she believes he wore on purpose until he was six years old. In one significant part in the book, Eva had just changed Kevin twice and it smelt like he’d done it again, which made her lose control and throw him half way across the nursery so that he landed with a 'clang' against the stainless steel changing table. Not only does this display the build up and release of Eva’s frustration, but it also shows a violent streak within her nature which left Kevin with a broken arm. She deeply regrets what she did and rushes him to the hospital; when they return home she is terrified in case he informs Franklin of what has happened. Kevin says that 'he fell' from the changing table whilst Eva was getting some wipes to which she realises that now she 'owes him' one.
There are also elements within the novel which demonstrate Kevins sociopathic behaviour, for example in one extract Kevin is accused by a neighbour of loosening the front tyre of their child’s bike when the father of the child approaches Eva and exclaims that his son ’could’ve been killed.’ Once Eva confronts Kevin he replies ’he thinks he’s so cool on that bicycle’ to which Eva says ’I didn’t remember mentioning anything about a bicycle.’ 
Eva finds out that she is pregnant but doesn’t inform Franklin until he sees her swelling belly. She wishes for another child because she wants a child different from Kevin, however when she brings up the subject Franklin states that she 'resents having a child' and that she picks on Kevin. When she informs Kevin that she is expecting he snaps all the crayons in his crayola pack and ominously replies 'you'll be sorry.'
Eva recalls that ever since the moment she is born Kevin torments his little sister who was named Ceila; at the hospital he holds water over her face, leaving it to drop over her head, he plays cruel games with her and it is implied that when Ceila is blinded by bathroom cleaner in her eye, that he is the culprit.
Eva states that the only time Kevin acted like a 'normal' child was when he became ill as he 'seemed like a completely different person.' Although she recalls reading 'Robin Hood' to Kevin, she strangely commends him for how much 'effort' and ’commitment’ it must have taken to generate the ’other boy’; this is a moment in which Eva realises that underneath Kevin’s anger and fury was sadness and despair, 'he wasn't mad he was sad.' This is also one of the only moments in the novel in which Kevin rejects his father, as if he didn’t have the energy to give Franklin the intimacy he demanded from him; he physically couldn’t act any more.
When Kevin has transitioned into a teenager the rebellious, cruel and darker elements of his nature come to light; Kevin and his friend Lenny were arrested for throwing bricks at cars passing by, he called a fellow classmate (Laura) fat when she suffered from anorexia which made her relapse and it is implied that the accident his sister suffered due to bathroom cleaner poured into her eye, which caused blindness, was due to Kevin’s actions. He also wears clothes which are too small for him and keeps an immaculate room, something which you wouldn’t expect a typical teenager to do. I did find it rather odd that the only book which he kept in his room was the book his mother read him when he was sick as a child; not only does ’Robin Hood’ have deep roots within Kevin’s childhood, as this was the only time he felt a connection with his mother, it foreshadows the unspeakable crime he has committed, which are revealed in the following chapters.
It is clear from certain elements in the novel that Eva does not understand Kevin, she is quite suspicious of his immaculately clean room and goes snooping around when he is not home. She discovers a floppy disc which she inserts into her computer leading it to completely crash and destroy it; little did she know she was inserting a virus into her flash drive which would corrupt not only her computer, but the computers at her work too. Once Kevin returns, Eva visits his room and he states that it was her own fault for taking the disc, however, what I found rather strange was Eva’s reaction to Kevin’s comments; she asks if he created all 23 virus 'to show that [he] was in control' and to ’show other people that they don’t control you’ ‘to prove that you can do something, even if you get arrested.’ This rather bizarre statement from Eva is one of the rare moments in the book in which Eva and Kevin attempt to understand each other, so much so that Kevin tells Eva that ’if there’s anybody you don’t like and if you’ve got their email address’ to just let him know, so that he could infect their computers with a virus, leading Eva to exclaim 'so this is bonding!'

The inevitable dissolution of Eva and Franklin’s marriage comes to light when Kevin and Lenny’s parents attend a meeting after school due to the fact that Kevin and Lenny claim that their teacher, Ms. Pagorski, had sexually abused them. Eva questions the validity of Kevin’s claims and seems rather ’impressed’ at his story, claiming that ’it was a bravura performance.’ Quite clearly, the subject of sexual abuse especially from a teacher is an extremely sensitive and serious matter, however, Eva praises Kevin’s ’performance’, which seems to me as if Kevin and Eva perhaps don’t have as little in common as they may think. She states that Kevin became annoyed because Lenny had let the story down, which made it less believable showcasing him and Kevin as liars and overall making them appear less credible; this leads Ms. Pagorski to not get what Kevin thought she 'deserved.' The argument pushes Franklin and Eva’s relationship to breaking point and they agree to get a divorce. Kevin overhears his parent fighting, which is rather ominously described by Eva as the moment in which Kevin decided to go on a murderous rampage as he didn’t want to get stuck living with Franklin 'getting stuck with dad the dupe.'

The incident on ’Thursday’ Eva continually keeps referring back to, is the day Kevin decided to murder seven students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher. He locked them in a gymnasium so that they could not escape while he shot them with arrows, one after the other. As the book combines flashbacks and Eva’s visits to Kevin in prison, she asks him why he did it and initially he claims that each one of the students were ’good’ at something, the teacher Ms. Rossi, who was the best friend of Ms. Pagorski and that the cafeteria worker was 'collateral damage' as she wasn’t meant to be there. What was even more horrifically shocking was the fact that Kevin murdered his own father and little sister with his cross bow at their house before he went on to kill the victims at his high school. However, at the end of the book Kevin states that he doesn’t really know why he murdered the victims any more, which shows for the first time in the book elements of remorse for his actions. In addition, we also now realise that the whole way through the book, Eva has been writing to her dead husband Franklin, perhaps as a way of therapy for her, so that she can move on with her life.'We Need to Talk About Kevin' ends with Eva preparing a spare bed, presumably for Kevin when he is released from prison, with a copy of ’Robin Hood’ on the bookshelf.

It is rather clear that Kevin seeks closeness, love and affection from his mother which in his eyes he did not get; ultimately Eva did not want children and it could be argued that she shouldn’t of had any children to begin with. Franklin does not seem to help situations at all throughout the book, he seems to molly coddle Kevin to the point of nausea and when Kevin plays with his dad it sounds as if it has been rehearsed, as if he’s studied how to act like a 'normal' child in front of him. Franklin continuously scolds Eva for her harsh treatment of Kevin and from her tone we could presume that she is; as an unreliable narrator Eva is speaking through her experience and her view of certain situations, which may not have happened exactly as she has described. The way in which she describes Franklin sticking up for Kevin continuously throughout the book, I believe would make any one rather annoyed, however, as I stated before, Eva has the voice of the unreliable narrator perhaps manipulating us to perceive Franklin in the way she wants him to be perceived.
Overall I would definitely recommended this book, although it is not for the faint hearted! It explores the complex relationships between families, in particular mother and son, with elements of psychology and psychopathy, ultimately ending on a note of hope and resolution.