*Strokes imaginary beard and scratches head thoughtfully* OK, I have an answer. The winner is…
The delightful We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. Wow, where do I begin?
I think the plot speaks for itself. This book covers difficult, emotive topics that you can’t help but ponder over. There’s the nature versus nurture debate; whether children can be inherently evil from birth; the expectations of parenthood that don’t necessarily match the reality; the notion of motherly love; the dynamics of family units; intense characters and fraught relationships. They are fantastic subjects even if I wasn’t sold on Eva’s character or narration. In fact, my wary attitude towards her probably enhanced the overall experience. I never felt quite settled or sure about what I was reading which certainly made me edgy.
Lots of questions arise from the subject matter and characters, but very little is answered definitively. We Need to Talk About Kevin intrigued and disturbed me but most of all, it made me think. It’s a challenging, stimulating and difficult read that I certainly lay thinking about at night. It caused me much internal debate and angst!
It’s safe to say that this story gave me one of the biggest book hangovers that I’ve ever experienced. The day that I finished the book, I couldn’t leave the Kevin bubble. I mulled everything over, then continued about my daily business, however I kept getting flashes of the events popping up in my mind. I’d be thinking about the characters, trying to find answers, wondering what happened when the story finished. It consumed me. I thought about it when I woke up in the morning and I thought about it as I was brushing my teeth at night. I normally feel like this when a book finishes, but this intensity continued for days. Even now, I still get ideas and thoughts. My imagination constructs the horrific scenes. I try to justify each side of the argument. In simple terms: it’s a completely haunting and contaminating tale.
Reading Kevin was an intense, conflicting experience and it’s a book that I’m genuinely glad that I made the effort to read. It was problematic yet enchanting. It’s full of great, important topics, but the execution didn’t always hit the mark. There was a fantastic character in Kevin, but that felt at odds with my attitude to Eva as the narrator. Despite some niggling issues and misgivings, the final chapters left me reeling and it’s a book that will stay with me.