We need to talk about Kevin

A Novel byLionel Shriver

Hajnalka Piszar, Bc. 2

Lionel Shriver• Lionel Shriver

• born in: Gastonia, North Carolina, The United States • gender: female

• genre: Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction

• About the author• Lionel Shriver's novels include the New York Times

bestseller The Post-Birthday World and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About

Kevin, which won the 2005 Orange Prize and has now sold over a million copies worldwide. Earlier

books include Double Fault, A Perfectly Good Family, and Checker and the Derailleurs. Her novels have been translated into twenty-five languages. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, the New

York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. She lives in London and Brooklyn, New

York.

The novel is a hard to read with difficult subject matter, dark and is definitely not a bed time story.

The book is written as a first person narration andconcerns a fictionalized school massacre told

through the perspective of a mother, who is writing letters to her (late) husband trying to come to

terms with the monstrosity that she birthed. The book goes into detail about Kevin displaying signs of psychosis from a young age leading up to his murder of seven classmates, a cafeteria worker,

and an algebra teacher when he was 17 years old.The author in an interview says how she

researched the subject about killings in schools. After the Columbia massacre it was felt a deep need in the American society to talk about this subject and this inspired many articles, studies,

books, films etc.We all know the factors which influences

personality are genetics, environment and education.

#7Kevin's mother was of Armenian origin - Eva Khatchadourian, and his father was

an American. They had both succeeded in their careers and had good material

background. Kevin was wanted, loved, cared for, with a good education and still

he had turn out to be a "special" kid, in spite of good parenting and all. Kevin’s

mother, at least partially, blames herself, as she was never all that enthusiastic about being a parent, let alone being a parent to a deeply disturbed individual.

Kevin shows no remorse but he is playing cool even in the prison facility for

under aged, like all the 17 years old teenagers and doesn't give a clear answer

to the universal question: WHY?Why he had committed all those crimes

including the killing of his father and younger sister?

IMPLAUSIBLE PSYCHO

• We Need To Talk About Kevin• Production year: 2011

• Runtime: 112 mins• Directors: Lynne Ramsay, Lynne Ramsey

• Cast: Ezra Miller, John C Reilly, Tilda Swinton• Mystery&Suspens, Drama and Psychological

thriller

• Perhaps the principal difference between film and

novel consists in the shift from the first-person perspective of

the book, in which Eva tells her story in the form of letters to her husband. The epistolary

structure of the novel gives us Eva (and all her evasions and self-deceptions) from inside, whereas the film’s eschewal

(avoidance) of voiceover means that much of what we

learn about Eva we glean from studying her facial expressions

and her body postures. In a film that is many ways about the failures and inadequacies

of verbal communication, Swinton’s rightly praised

performance consists in large part in the way that she

deploys the angularity of her face and body to convey

misgivings and trauma that are never spoken.

• Eva’s case seems to be that Kevin was born a psychopath—a psychopath whose whole life is geared toward tormenting her. Kevin’s cruelties appear to be designed with his mother as the audience. Shriver makes much of the parallels between Eva and Kevin, and some of the most memorable shots in the film

position mother and son as doubles of one another. Kevin derives extra enjoyment from the performance of doting son

that he artfully puts on for the benefit of his annoyingly credulous father (John C. Reilly). Ultimately, however, in the film as in the novel, it is Kevin that is the weakest element.

• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242460/

Questions

• 1. What's the name of the novel and the movie?• 2. Who is the author of the book?

3. Is the book trying to give an answer to what is happening in the American society?

• 4. When was the film made?• 5. What is the genre of the movie?• 6. What is one of the biggest differences between the novel and the

film?• 7. The novel and the film is depicting a mother-son relationship?• 8. Is child cruelty and bullying a reality in our days/ societies?

Sources• http://www.slideshare.net/SilviaBazzarelli/we-need-to-talk-to-kevin• https://www.google.sk/search?

q=cover+photo+for+the+book+we+need+to+talk+about+kevin&rlz=1C1AVNA_enSK578SK578&es_sm=122&biw=1517&bih=741&tbm=isch&imgil=2ZRdT3wxtFxNtM%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fencrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcTo3YrtETH3ltqHMLHuISdWEn9EpqQudMREJwMNpqofjuQtvP7Z%253B313%253B475%253BLNjvD-PyRvxn2M%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fen.wikipedia.org%25252Fwiki%25252FWe_Need_to_Talk_About_Kevin&source=iu&usg=__p4ehW259YfPEURu6Lm4gjjeCVN8%3D&sa=X&ei=FM9GU8OqOsn8ywPz-IK4Dw&ved=0CCsQ9QEwAQ#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=2ZRdT3wxtFxNtM%253A%3BLNjvD-PyRvxn2M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fupload.wikimedia.org%252Fwikipedia%252Fen%252Ff%252Ffd%252FWeNeedToTalkAboutKevin.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fen.wikipedia.org%252Fwiki%252FWe_Need_to_Talk_About_Kevin%3B313%3B475

• http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/45922.Lionel_Shriver• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD3SytWD8cU• http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/oct/20/we-need-to-talk-about-kevin-review• http://www.filmquarterly.org/2012/05/implausible-psycho-we-need-to-talk-about-kevin/• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242460/• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide