We Need To Talk About Kevin - Softcover

Shriver, Lionel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852424672 ISBN 13: 9781852424671

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2006

Synopsis

WINNER OF THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2005 Two years ago, Eva Khatchadourian?s son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker, and a popular algebra teacher. Because he was only fifteen at the time of the killings, he received a lenient sentence and is now in a prison for young offenders in upstate New York. Telling the story of Kevin's upbringing, Eva addresses herself to her estranged husband through a series of letters. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about both motherhood in general and Kevin in particular. How much is her fault? Lionel Shriver tells a compelling, absorbing, and resonant story while framing these horrifying tableaux of teenage carnage as metaphors for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.

About this title

Review:

In fact everybody needs to talk about Kevin. Once in a while, a stunningly powerful novel comes along, knocks you sideways and takes your breath away: this is it... a horrifying, original, witty, brave and deliberately provocative investigation into all the casual assumptions we make about family life, and motherhood in particular (Daily Mail)

This superb, many-layered novel intelligently weighs the culpability of parental nurture against the nightmarish possibilities of an innately evil child (Daily Telegraph 2006-05-06)

Urgent, unblinking and articulate fiction (Sunday Times 2006-05-07)

Cleverly balances the grand guignol and the mundane (Guardian 2006-05-06)

Shriver keeps up an almost unbearable suspense It's hard to imagine a more striking demolition job on the American myth of the perfect suburban family (The Sunday Telegraph 2006-05-21)

A study of despair, a book of ideas and a deconstruction of modern American morality (David Baddiel The Times)

One of my favourite novels... the best thing I've read in years (Jeremy Vine London Magazine)

Book Description:

Exclusive author interview with Paul Blezard.
'Elegant investigation...with a brilliant denouement' Observer

About this edition

• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1852424672
• ISBN 13: 9781852424671
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 500