Sometimes I even listened (fast) while I read along in print. I actually found that it lent itself really well to being spoken rather than read, and I did large swaths of this on audiobook. The writing - Eva's voice - feels a little stiff at first, but stick with her. I am going to be thinking about this for a really long time. Even readers can't pull ourselves out of our expectations of her as his mother, the gut reaction that she's partly to blame although of course she isn't at all. Beyond just depicting Kevin's chilling nature and behaviors (this kid is CREEPY), you also find yourself wavering between believing Eva and not, and then feeling guilty for it. But it's also an undeniably brilliant feat. deeply unsettling, and often difficult to read. Trapped between the expectations of what it means to be a mother, a parent's perceived responsibility for a child's actions, and a terrorizing son, she was damned if she did, damned if she didn't. Kevin showed psychopathic tendencies from infancy, especially to his mother - but over and over again, Eva was not believed. This book is narrated by a woman named Eva as she writes letters to her former husband, giving her full account of the years leading up to the day their son murdered nine classmates and a teacher. Mid-review important trigger warning: School shootings We Need to Talk About Kevin won the Women's Prize in 2005, so was next up for me in the #ReadingWomen challenge to read all the previous winners this year.
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