Play Book Tag discussion

I read We Need to Talk About Kevin over a decade ago and still think about it every time I hear about a school shooting. When I saw it under the tag "Mental Health" I thought this would be a great time to revisit it. This story was still all-consuming.

Told in a series of compelling letters written to her estranged husband, Franklin, Eva Khatchadourian is trying to make sense of what has happened in their lives. Their son, 15-year-old Kevin, brutally, with premeditation, murdered seven of his fellow classmates, a cafeteria worker and his English teacher in a Columbine-style school massacre. Eva is trying to figure out how much culpability she shares for how Kevin turned out, and how much was simply the way Kevin was born.

She examines her son's life, from conception to his terrible act of violence, trying to understand the why of it. What becomes clear early on is that Eva tortures herself with blame. She is guilt-ridden that her shortcomings as a parent might have caused Kevin's evil act, his violent behavior, his very nature. She must have failed, she must have been deficient as a mother, for her boy to commit such a chilling crime. She also considers that neither nature nor nurture are solely responsible for shaping a child's character. Her honest, introspective correspondence to her beloved husband causes the reader to consider that some children just might be born bad. How and when are psychopaths created?

This is definitely not a book everyone would or could enjoy. It's slow going at first and Eva is examining everything ad nauseum. Some readers think Eva is the evil one in the book and others will believe that Kevin was truly evil from conception and virtually nothing could have been done to prevent the tragedy. There is a movie based on this book, starring Tilda Swinton as Eva. When I watched it several years ago, it was just as fascinating.