We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel - Softcover

Shriver, Lionel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 006072448X ISBN 13: 9780060724481

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2004

Synopsis

In this gripping novel of motherhood gone awry, Lionel Shriver approaches the tragedy of a high-school massacre from the point of view of the killer's mother.In letters written to the boy's father, mother Eva probes the upbringing of this more-than-difficult child and reveals herself to have been the reluctant mother of an unsavory son. As the schisms in her family unfold, we draw closer to an unexpected climax that holds breathtaking surprises and its own hard-won redemption. In Eva, Shriver has created a narrator who is touching, sad, funny, and reflective. A spellbinding read, We Need to Talk About Kevin is as original as it is timely.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Eva never really wanted to be a mother—and certainly not the mother of a boy who ends up murdering seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage, in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

About the Author:

Lionel Shriver is the author of seven novels, and has written extensively for the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Economist. She lives in London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 006072448X
• ISBN 13: 9780060724481
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416