We Need To Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

I bought two books ten days ago, thinking it would take me a month to read them and that I'd have one for my flight on November 3rd.
I sorely underestimated myself. I guess I thought I was busier.

The first book I bought was We Need To Talk About Kevin. I'd just seen the movie based on the book starring Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller and I was blown away by how good it was. I tend to get obsessive about my passions so I couldn't stop thinking about this movie and wanted to know everything about it. I saw it based on Lionel Shriver's book of the same name.

Reading the book after seeing the movie is clearly the way to go. The opposite invariably makes me feel cheated when I see all the nuances that have been omitted or flat-out spooned out to the audience, all the scenes and characters that have been changed or left by the wayside. Reading the book after is like being given a treasure chest and discovering all the jewels you couldn't see before. So for me the experience was great.

For what it's worth, the trailers do not do the movie or the book justice, although now that Britain has got the movie, maybe the trailers will be revisited. Had I seen them before I would have written it off immediately. As it is I sort of wandered into the theater with a hazy synopsis - A mother must come to terms with her son's "irreparable act". Not particularly enticing, to be honest but I get free tickets so I figured why not.

The movie and book deals with the dark dynamic between a mother who resents her son for 'ruining' her previously adventurous baby-free life, and said son's subsequent feelings of rejection and how it affects him as he grows up. More than that, it deals with a mother's inability to understand her son, who quite probably doesn't understand himself either, nor does he understand the world around him. The result is akin to watching a sociopath grow and evolve, and understanding how he came to be like that, if not why. (Or do I mean why, if not how?)

The story appealed to that part of me that adores the dystopian, the deranged, the disturbed, the darkly enticing. Truth be told I sometimes saw Kevin as a possible alternate for myself. I understood, more instinctively than rationally how he could and would do some of the things he did. I know I empathised with him perhaps far more than I should have. Also knowing what I did, there was an odd sensation of feeling like the mother distrusted her kid too damn much and never gave him a chance and thinking well...did he give her a chance to act differently?

In the movie three actors play Kevin - a toddler, a pre-teen and a teen - all of whom were amazingly at creating a cohesive thread and making Kevin come to life. I had their images in mind, and Tilda's for the mother, when reading the book which made the book's universe that much more immersive for me.


I will say that the first part of the book is frustrating because the mother/Shriver takes so long to get down to it. I read on because I knew what was coming next and knew I'd love it. I wasn't disappointed but I did have to bear with those first few chapters. Would it have been the same had I read the book first? *shrug*


Either way I definitely recommend the book and the movie, though I'd say watch the movie first. 

I find interesting that he is in blue and she is in red. I would have gone with him in red to represent his unending rage and her in blue to represent her distance and cold demeanour. At the same time, his blue also suggests a calculating and chilling intensity while her red is the turmoil of confusion and jumbled emotions. It works but it does tip the scale in her favour I think.