I’m a huge Lionel Shriver fan – difficult, divisive, dark and absolutely enthralling.
My sister and her friend and I trade Shriver novels and can talk about them endlessly. I have often thought that I’d like to belong not to a book club but to a Lionel Shriver book club. Although not my favourite of Shriver’s books, the film adaptation of We Need to Talk About Kevin, starring Tilda Swinton sounds very promising indeed. This is the book Shriver wrote when she explored for herself whether she ever wanted to be a mother. She decided not.
I think Kevin has attracted an audience because my narrator, Eva, allows herself to say all those things that mothers are not supposed to say. She experiences pregnancy as an invasion. When her newborn son is first set on her breast, she is not overwhelmed with unconditional love; to her own horror, she feels nothing. She imputes to her perpetually screaming infant a devious intention to divide and conquer her marriage. Eva finds caring for a toddler dull, and is less than entranced by drilling the unnervingly affectless, obstreperous boy with the ABC song. Worst of all, Eva detects in Kevin a malign streak that moves her to dislike him.
Here’s a link to The Guardian’s review for the film:
It is a movie which is a skin-peelingly intimate character study and a brilliantly nihilist, feminist parable: what happens when smart progressive career women give birth to boys: the smirking, back-talking, weapon-loving competitive little beasts that they have feared and despised since their own schooldays?
I want to see this film!
blue milk 
Me, too!
Oh I desperately want to see this! And read the book – how is it I’ve never heard of this author til now?
I just watched this trailer yesterday, after realising Tilda Swinton was in it. It’s seriously one of the scariest and doomed books I’ve read, and it’ll be just so amazing to see Tilda’s performance!
It’s the only Shriver book I’ve read, great to hear the others are better (in your opinion) as I’ll hop to it! xo
The book was very good, thuogh I did not like the way it reduced violent children down to ‘they were born that way’. Made me think of a highschool teacher I had who kept repeating “They were in a cult!” when the Columbine school massacres happened (At the time I could completey understand what had probably happened to drive two people taught from early on that rage was the only acceptable outlet for bullying when the teachers turned a blind eye, or joined in).
Still would like to see the film. 🙂
Having not read the novel, I’m going to guess that no one believes her when she brings up her concerns about a two year old sadist?
Sarah – Oh, there is so much enjoyment ahead for you.
veronicadarling – Kevin is definitely her best known book, and very highly thought of but it wasn’t the one that I loved the most. Really enjoyed Zero Game and Post-Birthday World.
Aphie – interesting, cos I don’t read the book as having resolved the question of nature or nurture for really violent/cold children.
Cassandra – no-one believes her.. but it is an interesting read because throughout the book you have to wonder to what degree you, the reader, even believe her. Shriver specialises in somewhat unsympathetic characters.
Sarah – Oh, there is so much enjoyment ahead for you.
veronicadarling – Kevin is definitely her best known book, and very highly thought of but it wasn’t the one that I loved the most. Really enjoyed Game Control and Post-Birthday World.
Aphie – interesting, cos I don’t read the book as having resolved the question of nature or nurture for really violent/cold children.
Cassandra – no-one believes her.. but it is an interesting read because throughout the book you have to wonder to what degree you, the reader, even believe her. Shriver specialises in somewhat unsympathetic characters.
*nods* That makes sense. I can easily see an underwater mother struggling with rationalizing her child’s all-consuming behavior as intentionally malicious.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to watch this film or not; sans the obviously sadistic child, the mother’s experience hits too close to home. My husband was seriously upset when I referred to the kid as “my parasite” during pregnancy. 🙂
I may read it differently, with years of difference and the gulf of my own motherhood between then and now. I just remember getting the resolution very close to the end – not in a totally unambiguous manner, but fairly strongly emphasised.
I do want to go back and read it! I’m really wondering what I’d make of it now.
Such a meaty novel. Lots to talk about. My friend considered the shock at the end to be totally different from mine. Of course, can’t go on without giving away serious plot points.
I’m keen to see the film, but also a little scared. Not that I’m worried they’ll mess up the book – not like Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights – it’s only the content is so confronting.
Oh oh oh. This book was amazing but scared the hell out of me – I will need to read her other stuff.
I feel silly saying this, but I :cough: believed her… and I thought the father was really remiss?
Hendo, I vacillated between believing her and not believing her.
One of the things I found most interesting was that she seemed to identify with (and, to some extent, like) Kevin more than she did her daughter. Which, I think, works interestingly with the implications Aphie and Erin raise (“born that way”? “all the mother’s fault”?) – like blue milk, I don’t think the book resolves, or seeks to resolve, those questions. If anything, it raises other questions: do the mother and son have the same basic nature? If so, how/why can the mother operate as an apparent normal member of society, but not the son? Or can she? What are the implications of that?
It is a fascinating – and scary – read.
I don’t know. I mean, the trailer is chilling, but I’m a little troubled by the whole ambivalent mother raises a sociopath storyline (or however one wants to categorize the child). I like the ambivalence, and the idea of the intensely negative dynamics that can develop between mother and child. That’s great stuff. But I really didn’t like the implications of the book (also I found it, esp. the end, pretty OTT in an unbelievable way). I feel like I can’t be more specific with my remarks without accidentally slipping into a spoiler, but I am curious what bluemilk thinks about the implications of the story for feminist mothers of boys. And I’m not sure how I feel about the review linked below the trailer talking about the feminist mothers vs. their stereotypical boys. I mean, again, I really like the general motif of what happens when parents don’t like parenting, or even more complicated – what happens when they don’t like their children, because their children turn out to be radically different. But the book/movie is something different, and felt a little ham fisted or something to me, as well as punishing.
“I’m a little troubled by the whole ambivalent mother raises a sociopath storyline”
Me too. That is what bothered me about the book too.
I couldn’t finish it because I just hated the writing style – too self-conscious and indulgent for me.
But on such a strong recommendation from Bluemilk, I might have to try it again…
I just don’t think I’ll be able to watch this film… the trailer alone scared the s*%# out of me! I might have to wait for it to come out on DVD unless I can find someone brave enough to see it with me… in daylight hours!!
Can I join your Lionel Shriver book club please? She’s my favourite writer. I am also really looking forward to the movie.
The book is brilliant and terrifying. As for the movie – SWINTON! Can’t wait.
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Swinton did a video interview with Roget Ebert (it’s on his blog) about this movie and she intimates that the mother is an “unreliable narrator”. Is the book written in the first person? If so, that would go a long way to explaining why this story is so intriguing. Even if if it’s told solely from her PoV there’ll be overtones of unreliable narrator coming in. I’m very keen to see this movie, and now I know it’s a book, wanna read! Thanks!
Amanda – yep, the mother is the narrator and it’s a great read.
[…] a lot has happened for me in the last (almost) seven years of being a mother. When I read Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin back all that time ago, the book causing a big stir and me, with my first baby in my arms, I was […]