How are you?
For this Book Review Monday, I am going to be reviewing We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. I read this as research for one of my college courses and I really enjoyed it. I realise it came out a while ago, but I have lots of things I want to say about it. Like all my other reviews, it will contain spoilers, so if you have not read the book or watched the movie, you will not be able to read this review.
We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver- Contains Spoilers
Cover Chat
I'll be honest, this photo does the cover no justice. I really like this cover as it is quite mysterious and it doesn't give too much away about the plot.
Plot
Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not of the boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who tried to befriend him. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband. Uneasy with the sacrifices of motherhood, Eva fears that her dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so drastically off the rails.Winner of the 2005 Orange Prize, We Need To Talk About Kevin is a brilliant, controversial, unsettling book.As always, this summary is taken from Goodreads. It is rated as 4.06/5 and this is from 104263 ratings.
Opinions
This book was amazing! I picked it up to read for one of my college courses and I really enjoyed it. I gave it 5/5 stars. It discussing a controversial issue of a school shooting and talks about it from the perspective of a parent. The main focus of the book was how Kevin ended up shooting people through Eva being a bad parent.We Need To Talk About Kevin makes you think about the amount of gun crime that occurs in America, especially in the late 1990's and early 2000's. It also addresses the issue of the fact that America was a nation controlled by fear (at the time the book was released). I had to do a lot of research for a college project about school shootings, so I know at the time, schools in America were very tense surrounding the issue of school shootings.
It was one of the most emotional reads I have ever read. At the end of the book, when we find out Franklin and Celia have been killed by Kevin, I was really shocked. I knew there was something wrong and that he would kill people at his school, but I never thought he would kill his family. It came as a shock as this book is told through letters that Eva writes to Franklin.
If you have read the book and enjoyed it, I highly recommend the movie as it is very accurate to the book. It was made in 2011, so it should be quite cheap on Amazon, if you're looking for a movie to watch.
So that is it for my review of We Need To Talk About Kevin, if you have read the book or watched the movie, let me know what you thought!
Love,
Carenza x
