inulro | [Books 2007] We need to talk about Kevin

20.We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

I'd wanted to read this one since it won the Orange prize, but this is the first time a copy has been in the library at the same time as I have.

It is indeed harrowing - I may be addicted to the supernatural horror genre, but this is really scary stuff, and really compelling reading. There's several situations in it that probably wouldn't have happened In Real Life, but it reminded me of a book I haven't read since 1991 (it got lost in a move the following year), Deborah Spungeon's And I Don't Want to Live This Life. Spungeon is Nancy's (as in Sid and) mother, and it's a chronicle of how Nancy was an out of control child virtually from birth. Spungeon spent years trying to convince the medical establishment that there was something wrong with Nancy, and they kept telling her she was a bad mother and/or imagining it all. After Nancy died she found out that some of the doctors she'd taken Nancy to had thought that Nancy had a neurological condition but for some reason (probably there was nothing they could do to treat it - bear with me. I read this book over a decade ago and I can't remember last week) didn't disclose it at the time.

So I'm left thinking two things:
1) Kevin's behaviour is not as entirely in the realm of fiction as you might want to kid yourself. Because what creeps me out is frankly not the massacre, but everything he did up to that point.
2) Even in this age where everyone is supposed to be hyper-vigilant in search of the next school/workplace shooter, if a mother identified her own child as a likely culprit and tried to get help, she'd probably be told it was All In Her Head, that she was a bad mother and otherwise given the brush-off.

I'm reading more since we lost Sky 1. That event coincided with my starting my new job, which is further from home than my last job, and thus I also have more reading time on the bus every day. And I get proper lunch breaks with a quiet place to read.