We Need to Talk About Kevin

A Novel

By: Lionel Shriver

Narrated by: Coleen Marlo

Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

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 16th 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.

©2003 Lionel Shriver (P)2012 HarperCollinsPublishers

Critic reviews

“Shriver handles this material, with its potential for cheap sentiment and soap opera plot, with rare skill and sense.” ( Newark Star Ledger)

“A slow, magnetic descent into hell that is as fascinating as it is disturbing.” ( Cleveland Plain Dealer)

“Powerful [and] harrowing.” ( Entertainment Weekly)

Slow start but...

had to know what happened. Great story and was glad to get resolution. sad but realistic portrayal of psychopath and parental challenge of raising children. what's a normal kid?

terrifying

although the story seems to drag on and starts slow, it proves itself to be exciting and incredibly dark towards the finale

Beginning was a struggle but strong finish

This book really drags on for the first 13 to 14 chapters. But it has a strong disturbing finish. Disturbing and chilling are words that come to mind. Narration is well done. I feel like the first half of the book could be condensed down. Overall I did like the book.

I am perplexed by many things in the book

I am child free by choice but that doesn’t mean that I hate kids.. I just don’t want one of my own. If she and her husband hadn’t been clear with one another that is childish and begs for conflict.

I don’t know who I am more angry with ... the parent that IGNORED every red flag or the parent that didn’t fight for the kid to get help for the sake of the entire world.

This book was extremely exhausting... nearly all of the people in it need to have water tossed on them to wake up

Slow To Start But Worth The Wait

I had a hard time getting interested at first, but it was worth waiting. Although I predicted the ending a out half way through it was a great story. Im suprised by the reviews which blame the turn of events on the mother. I saw the father as much more complicit in the outcome since be refused to see reality and there were never any consequences for bad behavior because he was such a pushover. That whole "my child never does anything wrong" attitude can never end well.

Awash with sesquipedalian tendencies.

The story was good if not fairly predictable. It took awhile to really get into it, but never truly hooked me. When it's over there's allot to think about. The writer seems to be quite in love with his thesaurus... if there's an opportunity to use a longer word than is necessary, he jumps on it. I like a book to have flourishes and read with intelligence, but this was done to the point of distraction. Perhaps it was an aspect of the character that is writing the story, but it's hard to tell. It could be the author loves to flash his vocabulary.

Riveting, but wordy

I feel like this book could have been half as long without sacrificing content or impact.
That being said, it was a wonderful book. The first half is a bit of a slog, but if you can get through that it comes out to be a wonderful story by the end.

great book

the story is told in a very interesting way and just made the ending have that much more of an impact definitely worth
the full listen

Intense!

Where does We Need to Talk About Kevin rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is certainly a terrific book. It was quite draining and I needed to put it down and have a break several times because of the intensity of the story and the parents inability to deal with the situation at hand. Lots and lots of long words which made my head spin a bit.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The narrators voice was a bit vanilla.

If you could take any character from We Need to Talk About Kevin out to dinner, who would it be and why?

It certainly wouldn't be Kevin!

Dark but good!

I enjoyed this book! It took a while for me to get into it because the narrator (in my opinion) was not the greatest. It was hard to follow with her voice. But overall the story was good. I really wish his reasoning was explained more and they went into it more. Maybe it’s self explanatory but I felt like it needed more there and less on other stuff. Felt like a lot of fluff at sometimes.