WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN
Lionel Shriver
By Human Library Creator- Michaella Voss
I put off reading this book for far too long. I don’t know about the rest of you, but the longer I have been working in the social sector, the less I feel the desire to come home and read something disturbing. I feel I am exposed to enough trauma and sadness across my 9-5, that reading holds a regulation function for me. As a result, reading a book about parenting a mass-murderer was very far down the list of something I considered a “feel good activity”. What I will say though, the structure of the novel surprised me and provided a greater explanation of human attachment, parenting and the factors leading up to the main event, as opposed to referencing a lot of gory details. We Need to Talk about Kevin takes you on a journey, one in which you feel you don’t want to miss a beat. This is a book you could re-read repeatedly and possibly pick up something else that was hidden from you initially. It is a great book, so for any other skeptics or people nervous to give a novel like this ago, you have heard it first from me, it certainly is worth your time and effort to begin!
We Need to Talk about Kevin, written by Lionel Shriver is a fictional story, told in an epistolary form, which is a fancy way to say, this book is written in the style of recorded letters. Eva, Kevin’s mother writes letters to her absent husband, Franklin. Eva writes letters, explaining her thoughts and feelings about what was going on, just as Kevin was conceived. Through her perspective, we are taken on a journey, witness to Kevin’s upbringing which ultimately leads us to the fateful massacre. Eva writes two years post this horrific event. In the current time, Kevin is incarcerated, and she shared in letter with her husband, the interactions she has with Kevin in the present, as well as her difficulty of being shunned and blamed by society as a result of what Kevin has done.
Through Eva’s writing, Kevin is portrayed as essentially evil from birth. However, through the same writing it is also clear that Eva never wanted to have a child, but felt forced to do so, never securing an attachment with her child and resenting Kevin for stealing her identity and future hopes, dreams and aspirations. Eva also talks openly about her frustration that Franklin never validated her feelings or emotions around Kevin and her journey into parenthood. Largely, Franklin appeared rather nonchalant and dismissive of Eva’s worries, in some way appearing more focused on portraying to society that their family was living the ‘American dream’, with the house, the kids and the white picket fence.
Shriver says in the afterward, people who read the novel fall into two camps; those who see Kevin as truly evil and Eva as victimised, and those who see him as a victim of circumstances, mainly an indifferent mother. I felt somewhat forced to make a judgement around each of the characters, one that was hard to ‘stick by’ as such, the more information was revealed and the more the story flowed. I feel that this novel encourages a lot of inward reflection as our judgements ultimately reveal a lot about who we are and what we believe in.
So how does this book tie in to practice across the social sector? Well, I have been thinking about this a lot over the last few weeks. Of course, this book stirs up the age-old debate of nature vs nurture, but I think there was another poignant key message that struck a chord with me personally…
How many of us in our professional or personal lives avoid or struggle to bring up the “elephant in the room” in fear of upsetting someone? I feel that this fear is just as much about not wanting to upset another person, as it is not wanting to upset ourselves. We don’t bring up the difficult topics, because ignoring them is comfort. I relate this to this story, in the sense where I wonder what would have happened for these fictional characters if they had someone brave enough perhaps to be inquisitive around what was going on in the family system? I wonder what would have happened if Eva felt she could talk openly about her struggles and have some additional support, right from the start? People are paralysed to both meet their needs and offer support often in fear of shame and judgement.
To conclude, maybe we don’t need to just talk about Kevin, maybe we need to talk about Eva, the whole family system or society as a whole to truly understand this novel and something deeper about ourselves and the world we live in.
