I know Rebekah thinks very highly of this book (not without reason, I might now add), but based on a search of the board she's never gotten around to writing a review of it. So I guess I'll have to, and she can tell me where I'm right and where I'm wrong.

We Need To Talk About Kevin is the story of Eva Khatchadourian, an Armenian-American woman who is trying to pick up the pieces of her life after her rise to nationwide fame in perhaps the most painful way imaginable: her son went on a killing spree in his school, twelve days before Columbine. Through Eva's letters to her estranged husband Franklin, the reader is told the whole story of their marriage, Kevin's childhood, and, of course, the events of Thursday.

Of course any book with such a premise would've been both controversial and unsettling, but Shriver's book goes further than that. Kevin is a strange, unsettling, possibly sociopathic but highly intelligent child, and the complicated relationship with his mother is the core of the book. As several reviewers have pointed out, the biggest taboo Shriver tackles is that Eva, much of the time, simply dislikes and even loathes her son. And not without reason, though Eva's flaws as a mother and as a person are apparent as well; she is not a wholly sympathetic character.

Shriver is careful to avoid easy answers, or to push any single viewpoint onto the reader about these massacres. She manages to make Eva seem credible when seeing malice in Kevin even when he's still a toddler - but also makes clear that Eva, the only PoV character in the book, is to some degree subjective in her story. While Kevin, to not mince words, is certainly a monster, but that doesn't mean he can't have feelings, or be sympathetic on occasion. And would he have been different with a different mother?

The main dramatic event of the story - the massacre - is made clear from the start. All the same, even if it isn't a surprise, the tension builds as Eva's reminiscences approach Thursday, and when it finally arrives, it does still manage to shock. However, the real climax comes only after that, in the last two dozen pages of the book. I must say I'm of two minds about these last two dozen pages. They contain two major twists - even if one of them is foreshadowed heavily enough that I dare say most readers will have at least an inkling of what is coming. And those twists work, let there be no doubt about it: they have a powerful emotional impact and leave the reader with even more difficult questions and food for thought.

Nevertheless, there is something cheap about the juxtaposition of those two twists. From a writing point of view, it's an excellent idea - a one-two punch from two entirely different directions, much more effective than if the two had been spread further apart. But the subject is delicate enough that such an obvious - yet effective - trick of emotional manipulation feels cheap and somewhat tasteless to me. Perhaps that is unfair of me, grudging an author her sleight of hand to enhance the power of her book - one can hardly blame an author for writing the best book she can. And if the reader is forced to consider things from a closer distance, and it's made harder to reach some too-easy conclusion, that can't be a bad thing. But still. It bugs me.

We Need To Talk About Kevin is a powerful book, in its themes and its writing. My main complaint looks suspiciously like a backhanded compliment, and I cannot think of many genuinely negative things to say about it. That said, it certainly isn't for everyone, as some people will find the themes - or just Eva's cynicism - too heavy for their taste. But for those who like thought-provoking books, this one is certainly highly recommended.