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| We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel (P.S.) |
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List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $11.16
You Save: $ 2.79 (20%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780061124297
ISBN: 006112429X
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 432
Publication Date: 2006-07-01
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: 2006-07-03
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Editorial Reviews:
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The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry 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, Franklyn. 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.
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| Spotlight customer reviews: |
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Customer Rating:
Summary: We Need to Talk About Kevin
Comment: Fascinating, finely honed novel about what happens when, despite all the recommended strategies for parenting, your child totally lacks empathy and connection with other people. Written from the viewpoint of Kevin's mother, this story keeps you entralled (and horrified), guessing about the plot right up until the end. Not to be recommended for anyone who's pregnant, but a rivetting read for most other adults.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good
Comment: I thought this was very good. She gave Eva a very strong narrative voice, I liked her, felt sorry for her as well. I read Nineteen Minutes also, it was a fail in my opinion, so I may be rating this higher due to the comparison.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Please don't waste your money or your time...
Comment: I have a 50-page rule, wherein I return, give away, or otherwise dispose of any book that does not hook me in the first 50 pages. This one had a slightly redeeming scene around page 49, so I stuck around for a while longer. Time I apparently wasted. The book is written in a whiny tone that is supposed to demonstrate the main character's (read "author's") superior grasp of what life is all about.
One of the first things I said upon reading about the birth of Kevin is "this woman has never given birth", a statement that I have later found to be true. Her portrayal of parenthood is equally unrealistic. I quit about halfway through the book, reading only the last chapter or so to find out that the premise of the book (writing letters to an estranged spouse) is false. He's dead. I guess she just forgot to mention that until the end of the book.
I am curious what drove the main character to have a second child, but not enough to subject myself to any more of this crap. No stars. None.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good, but overrated
Comment: While I agree that someone needed to talk about Kevin (and TO HIM - oh 15 years earlier or so), I wonder if we really needed to talk about him THIS much. I found myself screaming sometimes in the beginning of this book "NO! We do NOT need to talk about Kevin! Shut up!" The first half of this book could have easily been cut by 75%. It's meandering and I only finished it because I wanted to know the ending. I hated the main characters in this book (except for the daughter). The mother's ambivalence, the father's blindness, the son's - well, everything about him. I wanted to smack that child, deck the mother and castrate the father. The book made me very angry. Can you tell?
Once you get past the first half, things really pick up - esp those last 80 pages or so. The author just spends too much time getting us there. I think part of me knew the "twist" ending, but I didn't want to know it, so I was surprised. I, honestly, am not 100% sure I'd recommend the book, HOWEVER, this would be a really really great book club book. Conversation inducing. I probably won't recommend it to my club because I don't wanna read the blasted thing again.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Grips you. Turns your stomach. Makes you think about what's important in life.
Comment: Whew, I haven't quite finished this book and I'm writing the review because I've been discussing it with some friends. Mostly we agree, but I strongly disagree with one usually insightful friend who maintains that the author, Shriver, hates, yes HATES her characters!
This book isn't about hating your characters. It's about a boy who hates himself, was born hating himself, and his mother's effort to cope with that and her own self-knowledge and ultimate responsibility for her actions. Exactly what and how much is she responsible for in the monster she gave birth to and what part in all this does her husband take?
As I said, I'm not yet done with the book and I've come off a previous read that is much, much lighter fare, so this is difficult for me. I've stopped reading it at night, it's so intense.
If you want to try for many laughs, I've recommended a totally different subject--internet dating--in another review. Middle-Age Confidential: My Life as a Date (This Could be a True Story),
If you can take the heavy novel--this is my first Shriver read--I say try this one.
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