We Need to Talk About Kevin – Lionel Shriver

We Need to Talk About Kevin is an uncomfortable book.  We know from the start that it is a book about a young boy who ends up shooting and killing staff and students at his school in a Columbine-style school massacre.

The story is told from the perspective of Kevin’s mother, Eva Khatchadourian, in the form of letters she is writing to her estranged husband.  In these letters she examines the life of her son, trying to find the seeds of his horrible act of violence.  She is plagued with guilt over the possibility she is somehow responsible for her son’s violence or that there may have been a way to reach her son to turn him from his murderous path. 

We Need to Talk About Kevin is available as a book group set at Maribyrnong Library.