We Need To Talk About Kevin

Description

Winner of the orange prize for fiction 2005 two years ago, eva khatchadourian? s son, kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker, and a popular algebra teacher. because he was only fifteen at the time of the killings, he received a lenient sentence and is now in a prison for young offenders in upstate new york. telling the story of kevin’s upbringing, eva addresses herself to her estranged husband through a series of letters. fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about both motherhood in general and kevin in particular. how much is her fault? lionel shriver tells a compelling, absorbing, and resonant story while framing these horrifying tableaux of teenage carnage as metaphors for the larger tragedy – the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.