We Need to Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

Somewhere along the way, I learned that this book had won this years Orange Prize for fiction. I read the synopsis of it and decided to check it out from the library. And so it came all the way from the Perimeter :)

It's about a woman whose son commits a school shooting. About whether she's to blame for it, and where does she go from here. It's dark. And it's funny, because though I didn't expect it to be light and fluffy, I was surprised about how dark it could be. and it's funny too, in black humor moments. It's a really good book. I see why it won a prize.

It also made me think about motherhood. About what to do, if, say, you realized your son was a sociopath and sadist. What do you do when there's nothing to be done? I don't believe they know how to fix a lack of empathy right now, or teach someone "not to be like that". In this case, it certainly didn't help that the whole of the family couldn't acknowledge the problem, but as a mother, how do you fix the unfixable. What do you do if you find out your child is a trainwreck waiting to happen?

"I never, ever took you for granted. We met too late for that; I was nearly thirty-three by then, and my past without you was too stark and inconsistent for me to find the miracle of companionship ordinary. But after I'd survived for so long on th escraps from my own emotional table you spoiled me with a daily banquet of complicitous what-an-asshole looks at parties, surprise bouquets for not occasion, and fridge-magnet notes that always signed off 'XXXX, Franklin.' You made me greedy. Like any addict worth his salt, I wanted more. And I was curious. I wondered how it felt when it was a piping voice calling, 'Momm-MEE?' from around that same corner. You started it - like someon who gives you a gift of a single carved ebony elephant, and suddenly you get this idea that it might be fun to start a collection. "

"But in the same vein, when a car nearly sideswipes me in a crosswalk, I've noticed that the driver is frequently furious - shouting, gesticulating, cursing - at me, whom he nearly ran over and who had the undisputed right of way. This is a dynamic particular to encounters with male drivers, who seem to grow all the more indignant the more completely they are in the wrong. I think the emotional reasoning, if you can call it that, is transitive; you make me feel bad; feeling bad makes me mad; ergo, you make me mad. If I'd had the presence then to seize on the first part of that proof, I might have glimpsed in Kevin's instantaneous dudgeon a glimmer of hope. But at the time, his fury simply mystified me. It seemed so unfair. Women tend more toward chagrin, and not only in traffic. So I blamed me, and he blamed me. I felt ganged up on."