About two paragraphs in to We Need to Talk About Kevin, I thought to myself, 'I'm not going to finish this book. It's been ages since I've not finished a book, but I'm just not going to be able to plow through all this crap.' A paragraph later, I was thinking, 'I hope these letters (that Eva writes to her husband Franklin) are the kind of letters that you write for yourself, to get things off your chest, like, or to muse with a presumed audience. I certainly hope she isn't sending these long-winded travesties, because if you'll actually say things like, "Awareness that there is no reserve permeates my ablutions with disquiet" or if you will refer to yourself as 'estranged' to the person from whom you are estranged, then I know why he left you.' In order to be able to say that, though, I had to read far enough to ensure that he did, in fact, leave her, and not the other way around.And then I would get so angry at the parts where she very obviously isn't writing to Franklin, but to you, the reader, like when she tells him things about their friends that it's clear from the context he would have known, or when the two of them and Kevin went to Vietnam and 'you'll recall that Celia, too young, stayed with my mother' which, phew, because I'm sure Franklin's there thinking, What did we do with Celia that time we went to Vietnam? Or when she informs him that she was 'slight' before Kevin's birth which, ok, if a guy doesn't know whether his wife is skinny or fat...and then I would think, Grrrr. If you can't maintain the narrative device, don't use the narrative device and just write some straight-up narrative.
This book finally drew a visceral reaction from me, and it did so by playing on my deepest fear as a woman - that I will have a child and not be able to love it. And not because I'm a bad person, but because my child is eeeeevil. Ack! And that it is both evil and smart! Ack ack! And that it, being both evil and smart, will only be evil around me, and around my husband will be easily soothed, so that he thinks I'm making the whole 'evil baby' thing up! Ack ack ack!
And then the further I read, the more deeply horrified I became. This book is scary shit. I had to read the last 150 pages all in one sitting, because I couldn't stand to be reading it anymore. The writing never got better, but I stopped noticing how awful it was. So much time is spent pulling you into this woman's nightmare, and then at the end it all gets so much more horrible than you think it ever could have, and there's no escape. I couldn't not finish the book, because then it'd be hanging over my head for the rest of my life, but finishing it was an exercise in terror.
Joel got up to go to the kitchen and asked me if he could get me anything. I said a new soul, please, because mine is full of holes now. I can't say that I liked it. I am honestly deeply disturbed, and don't know how well I'll sleep tonight. I just kept thinking, 'This could be me.' I can feel my ovaries drying up as we speak.
Um....ten caterpillars for sheer in-my-headedness, minus five for unbelievably pretentious writing. So...five.
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11 comments:
I read "The Post-Birthday World" and am totally with you on the pretentious writing. I can't tell you how many times I though, "WTF? Who says THAT?" Anyway, that books sucks, so don't read that either.
Great review. The story does such you in, but my god the writing is wretched. The whole time I read it I kept asking myself, "Who speaks like this?"
I found the writing often gorgeous, but definitely more often, as you say, "unbelievably pretentious." That didn't bother me as much as the sheer judgmental ugliness that I have to assume is Shriver's own, after reading a few of her books. But I think she's brilliant. Everything she did to your soul was intentional, and I don't think I'll ever be able to scrub this book out of my brain.
Yes. I was in total agreement with you while I read each of your post's paragraphs! This was a book I felt I had to TALK to others with and only bloggers who have read it already are the ones I can. Because I don't want to recommend it! Does that make any sense? It's a wide eyed wide awake book.
It's a good thing I read it for my bookclub, otherwise I don't think I would have made it to page 90 or so, which is where Kevin starts getting evil.
This was a great read, but our face2face group was really polarised about it. I haven't managed to read any others by her, although I have borrowed at least one from the library, but the due date creprt up on me
Re: the pretentious writing, I haven't read anything else by Shriver, so I don't know if it's her or not. I just assumed it was Eva, who is probably one of the most unreliable narrators you'll ever meet.
Oh, jeez, rayche - I don't know if I'm up to this one. I'm feeling uneasy from the review alone.
Hi Raych, I read and reviewed 'Kevin' back in December: http://lisamm.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/review-we-need-to-talk-about-kevin-by-lionel-shriver/
This book was upsetting and I wanted/needed something entirely different to read after finishing it. One thing I will say-it has definitely stuck with me. The details are fresh all these months later. I usually consider that the sign of a good book.
I've even turned off by the title. Sounds like a made-for-t.v. movie.
This book can certainly become a contentious topic. And that's what I love about it. It's not easy...it's not black and white...it's not easily tied up in a package on the last page.
I guess I didn't pay such close attention to the context of letters, so I didn't think about the fact that she was writing them pretentiously or writing things that would have been for another reader other than her husband.
I am a little worried because I see that you reviewed The Nineteen Minutes. Since you are my NBSM (New Blog Soul Mate), I am worried that The Nineteen Minutes will be the chink in your delightfully perfect coat-of-armor.
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