We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver, concerning a fictional school massacre. It is written from the perspective of the killer's mother, Eva Khatchadourian, and documents her attempt to come to terms with her son Kevin and the murders he committed. Although told in the first person as a series of letters from Eva to her husband, the novel's structure also strongly resembles that of a thriller. The novel, Shriver's seventh, won the 2005 Orange Prize, a UK-based prize for female authors of any nationality writing in English. It is published outside of the US by Serpent's Tail.

Kevin

Kevin's behavior throughout the book closely resembles that of a psychopath, although reference to this condition is sparse and left mostly up to the reader's imagination. He displays little to no affection or moral responsibility towards his family or community, and commonly distances himself from people to avoid attachment. Kevin seems to regard virtually everyone with contempt and hatred. Eva, his mother, makes frequent attempts to enter Kevin's mind and identify some reason for his detachment and his actions, which to non-psychopaths seem incomprehensible. He engages in many acts of petty sabotage from an early age, from seemingly-innocent actions like spraying ink with a squirt gun on a room painstakingly wallpapered by his mother in rare maps to encouraging a girl to gouge her eczema-affected skin. Rationalization for his behavior is one of the central themes of the story -- when asked the simple question 'Why?' after the massacre, he responds that he is giving the public the excitement and scandal that they secretly crave. Only in rare instances does another side of Kevin emerge: in childhood when he becomes very ill, and later, just before he is transferred to an adult prison and is evidently nervous. In these instances, he displays the simple need for love and comfort that all children seek. It is left ambiguous as to whether this is Kevin's real personality hidden under layers of psychopathy, or vice versa.