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Lionel Shriver: We Need to Talk About Kevin (2006, Harper Perennial)

Thrilling Character Study of the Worst People You've Never Met

Like with Gone Girl, I watched the movie first which is just my habit because, hey, someone has to do it! The film sits at an incredible apex of talent where Ramsey, Swinton, Miller, and even the comedian guy who plays the husband I forgot his name, expertly come together and portray these detestable characters with such refined skill that of course I had to see if the book was just as good.

The prose was unique in that it wasn't sweet and simple yet not overly loquacious it sits somewhere in the middle in a way that conveys Eva's simultaneous assimilation into American culture and her pretentious derision of it. (The references to brands wasn't as comically nauseating as American Psycho but it was certainly something unexpected that stood out to me.) As unlikable as they are the Katchadourians, even the titular Kevin and the almost-forgettable doofus husband aren't flat: we see glimpses into their complexity and inner psyche even though the book itself is restrained to Eva's point-of-view and it unravels at a satisfying pace that's too slow to be unrealistic and too fast to be boring.

More than just the story I enjoyed the novel's underlying themes and commentary on capitalism, the American Empire, the nuclear family, motherhood, and patriarchy. The book lead me down an insane all-nighter rabbithole reading Foucault and other feminist texts on the double-standard paradoxes of modern motherhood. I read this directly after Gone Girl and I'm obsessed with how both novels offer a peak behind the patriarchal theatre of the Mid-century American Dream and the nuclear family.

Like how Sherlock invented the murder mystery and SpongeBob created the trope of the (arguably?) gender-neutral happy-go-lucky optimist (I swear, if you watch American cartoons you'll know what I mean), this book established (revived?) a new genre of nuclear family drama thriller that I now see everywhere with varying levels of success from With Teeth, Baby Teeth, and The Push. (Respectively: very good remix, not that good, and mixed feelings.) It, unfortunately, stands alone in Shriver's portfolio of other novels that lie somewhere between unoriginal, mediocre, boring, anti-climactic, and unnecessarily smug. We Need to Talk About Kevin puts everyone else including Shriver's other titles in its shadow. It is a true trailblazer for people who love Uncomfortable Dinner Scenes.