We Need to Talk About Kevin

Now a major motion picture starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly and Ezra Miller, directed by Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar, Ratcatcher), score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. Published in twenty-eight countries. Over a million copies sold worldwide.

Two years ago Eva Khatchadourian’s son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker and a popular teacher. Now, in a series of letters to her absent husband, Eva recounts the story of how Kevin came to be Kevin.

Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about both motherhood in general and Kevin in particular. How much is her fault? When did it all start to go wrong?

Or was it, in fact, ever ‘right’ at all?

Lionel Shriver tells a compelling, absorbing, and resonant story while framing the horrifying tableau of teenage carnage as a metaphor for the larger tragedy—the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.

About the Author

Lionel Shriver has written for the Economist, the Wall Street Journal and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among other publications. She lives in London and New York.