We Need to Talk about Kevin (novel)

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Lionel Shriver, 2006

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a 2003 novel by US writer Lionel Shriver about a fictional rampage at a school . The novel is told from the perspective of Eva Khatchadourian, the mother of the gunman, and describes her attempt to come to terms with her son Kevin and the murders he has committed. Although Shriverusesthe form of a letter novel , the novel has elements of a thriller .

Shriver won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005 for this novel, which was her seventh . In 2011 the novel was filmed with Tilda Swinton in the lead role .

action

Eva's story takes the form of a series of letters that she writes to her presumably estranged husband, Franklin Plaskett, after the massacre committed by her son. Once wealthy and running her own publishing house, she lost all her prosperity due to the high legal costs after the rampage. She sold her company and now works as an employee of a travel agency. In the letters to her husband, she first describes her relationship with him in detail before she became pregnant with Kevin. This is followed by the description of family life together with Kevin up to the rampage, which Eva only calls "Thursday". In her letters she also confesses to her husband a series of events that she had kept secret from him until then. So she admits that in a fit of anger she once pushed Kevin away so much that he broke his arm. In her letters, however, she also describes the reaction of those around her as the mother of a murder victim, her visits to Kevin during his imprisonment, which she regularly undergoes, even though her son reacts coldly and negatively to her.

Eva's description of her son's behavior creates the image of a sociopath , although Eva describes only a few incidents, and much is left to the reader's imagination. The picture Eve paints of her son is that of a person who shows no affection or responsibility for his family or those around him. Kevin seems to feel contempt and hatred for everyone around him; These feelings towards his mother, to which he reacted negatively even as a small child, are particularly intense. Eva - a successful and wealthy publisher - describes a number of incidents in which Kevin harmed other people: Among other things, Kevin splashed ink on the walls of a room that his mother had previously carefully papered with maps, he damaged the bicycle of a neighboring child , He seduced a girl into scratching her eczema-covered skin and accused a teacher of sexual assault. Kevin has only one passion for archery, a sport he has been interested in since reading Robin Hood as a child .

The more evidence there is that Kevin's behavior deviates, the more Eva's husband Franklin begins to defend him. He considers him a healthy, normal boy and always finds explanations for his son's abnormal behavior. Kevin plays the role of a loving and respectful son towards him - an acting that Eva sees through. This leads to a growing estrangement between Eva and Franklin - just before the rampage, Franklin suggests that the couple split up.

Years after Kevin's birth, Eva had given birth to a second child. She wanted another child so that she could ultimately prove to herself that she could develop a normal relationship with a child. The trusting, cheerful Celia is the counterpart to her gloomy brother, who is hostile towards her. When Celia was six years old, she lost an eye in a household accident while Kevin was supposed to take care of her. It is unclear whether this happens because Eva forgot to put away an aggressive household cleaner or whether - as Eva is convinced - Kevin poured this cleaner in his sister's face and eye on the grounds that she had something in mind. Celia is silent about the incident.

Eventually, Eva also describes the rampage herself, and it becomes clear that Kevin's first victims were his father and sister. With a crossbow he first shot her and a little later seven classmates, one of the school's kitchen staff and a teacher. Eva himself suspects that he was carrying out this apparently long-planned act when he overheard Eva and Franklin considering a divorce. Kevin would probably have had to live with his father then, which would have cost him the final victory over his mother.

The novel ends on the day of the second anniversary of the killing spree - three days before Kevin turns eighteen and is due to be relocated from the detention center to Sing Sing , a maximum security prison near New York City. Marked by violence between inmates, Kevin is aware that he will be at the bottom of the pecking order in this more brutal prison: scared and dejected, Kevin approaches his mother for the first time. He hands her his sister's glass eye in a small wooden box made by himself, with the request that she bury it. For the first time he murmurs softly that he is sorry. Eva eventually asks Kevin for the first time why he committed the murders, and Kevin replies that he is no longer sure of the reasons. They hug and Eva is sure that she ultimately loves her son:

“There are only three days left to eighteen years and I can finally announce that I'm too exhausted and too confused and too lonely to fight it any longer. Even if it's just out of desperation or laziness - I love my son. He has five more tough years in the adult prison and I can't be sure which person they will be released one day. But in the meantime there is a second bedroom in my simple apartment. The duvet is simple. A copy of Robin Hood is on the book shelf. And the bedding is clean. "

Subjects of the novel

Shriver focuses on the role of genetic disposition and the environment in which a child grows up in character formation. In particular, Shriver questions the extent to which Eva's ambivalent attitude towards her role as a mother plays in the development of Kevin's character. This ambivalent attitude is contrasted with the optimistic attitude of Franklin, Eva's husband. In a review for the British newspaper The Guardian, Sarah A. Smith described this character drawing as too woodcut-like.

The central question is why Kevin committed this massacre. The narrator lists a number of comparable rampages, many of which Kevin describes as unprofessional. For example, reference is made several times to the rampage at Columbine High School , with Kevin describing the two perpetrators Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as "idiots" who would have given mass murder a bad name. Eva is convinced that her son is obsessed with this rampage, which occurred just twelve days after Kevin's (fictional) rampage and which attracted more public attention because of the higher death toll. Shriver also suggests in her novel that the high level of publicity that such acts attract may be a trigger for why young people react in this way to their environment. They also give the public the excitement and scandal they always crave.

filming

In 2005, BBC Films acquired the right to film the novel. The award-winning Scottish director Lynne Ramsay directed and Tilda Swinton took the lead role. The film won awards for Best Picture at the British Independent Film Awards 2011 and the Evening Standard British Film Awards 2011, as well as best British Film at the London Critics' Circle Film Awards. Tilda Swinton won the 2011 European Film Awards for Best Actress and the Online Film Critics Society Awards for Best Actress . The film was also nominated for Best Director , Best Actress and Best British Film at the British Academy Film Awards . Der Spiegel wrote in a review of the film:

“'We Need to Talk About Kevin' is the cruel story of alienation. An act of violence from film with a furious acting Tilda Swinton. "

- The mirror

radio play

From January 7, 2008, a radio play version of the novel was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 . The broadcast comprised a total of 10 episodes of 15 minutes each. Madeleine Potter cast the role of Eva Katchadourian. Ethan Brooke and Nathan Nole played Kevin and Richard Laing played Franklin Plaskett. The radio play is broadcast again from time to time.

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Shrivner: We Need to Talk About Kevin , p 400
  2. ↑ Shute, Jenefer. "Lionel Shriver" . BOMB Magazine . Fall 2005. Retrieved July 26, 2011.
  3. ^ Book review in The Guardian , accessed March 17, 2014
  4. ↑ Shriver: We Need to Talk about Kevin . P. 240
  5. ↑ Phil Miller: Why does this author need to talk about filming Kevin? . In: The Herald , September 14, 2007. Archived from the original on April 26, 2009. 
  6. ^ Paul Arendt: Ramsay needs to shoot a film about Kevin . In: The Guardian , Guardian News & Media, June 6, 2006, p. 21 ( G2 supplement). 
  7. ^ Editors: Producer Says Tilda Swinton to Star in "Kevin," Adaptation of Lionel Shriver Novel . New York Times Blogs. March 18, 2009. Retrieved March 21, 2009.
  8. ↑ My son, the sadist at spiegel.de, accessed on March 17, 2014
  9. ^ Cast list and broadcast dates . Radiolistings.co.uk. Retrieved March 14, 2014.

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