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Journal Entry 1 by goatgrrl from New Westminster, British Columbia Canada on Tuesday, December 27, 2005
 A Christmas gift from my stepmum, Katie, now added to my TBR pile.
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Journal Entry 2 by goatgrrl from New Westminster, British Columbia Canada on Saturday, April 07, 2007
I loved this novel with all my heart for its gutsy exploration of reluctant motherhood – the experience of finding oneself in a maternal role and learning that, contrary to all assurances leading up to the Big Event, not everyone takes to it like the proverbial duck to water. No novel I've ever read (nor any work of non-fiction) tackles this issue as honestly as Lionel Shriver has done in We Need to Talk About Kevin, and just halfway through the novel I was already dreading the end, because the conversation, this precious, rare conversation I felt I was having with its protagonist would be over.
That said, Kevin has its deficiencies. The eponymous character, a boy whose development we track (through his travel writer mother's recollections, as told in a series of letters to the boy’s apparently absent father) from birth to his teen years, is in some respects too evil. His behaviour at various points in the novel is more befitting that of a character in a Stephen King novel than in a work of literary fiction, and more could have been accomplished, thematically speaking, by putting Kevin up to more "ordinarily" malevolent antics. In a similar vein, the character of Franklin (the narrator's husband), at least as depicted in her own recollections of his reactions to Kevin's behaviour, seems just a bit too deluded, too lost in his own fantasy of suburban American normalcy. By the late 1990s, even a red-blooded American Dad like Franklin (maybe especially a red-blooded American Dad like him) would have identified the need to "get help" for Kevin, perhaps consigning him to a more examined childhood of play therapy and weekly psychologist's appointments. Other reviewers have complained about Shriver's excessively wordy style, which -- though an occasional distraction -- didn't bother me quite so much.
We Need to Talk About Kevin takes some Hitchcockian twists and turns, and even absent the overwhelming emotional resonances would have kept me hooked until the final page.
(Top left: author Lionel Shriver.)
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Journal Entry 3 by goatgrrl at Mangez Mangez coffeeshop in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada on Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Released 5 yrs ago (4/11/2007 UTC) at Mangez Mangez coffeeshop in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada WILD RELEASE NOTES:
RELEASE NOTES:
I'll be leaving this book on top of the newspapers around 9 am today. Best wishes and happy reading to whomever picks it up.
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We Need to Talk About Kevin
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
