We Need to Talk About Kevin: The Movie
“So what is your group reading?” I asked my friend as we talked my last evening in town, after a visit from Qatar, several years ago.
“I’m about to start something called ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ for Book Club,” she responded, “it’s like an Orange Award Winner.”
“What’s an Orange Award?” I asked
“I dunno,” she laughed, “but it’s on the list.” I was able to pick it up on my way to the airport.
A week later, I called her. “Are you reading ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin?'” I asked, and there must have been a note in my voice she recognized. “Why did you recommend this AWFUL book to me? It’s awful!”
“Can you put it down?” my friend asked.
“No! No, I can’t! But I can tell this isn’t going to end well.”
“Where are you?” she asked, and I told her.
“I’m right at the same place,” she said. “I hate it.”
We continued talking regularly as we read the book, a book which is truly, truly one of the scariest, most awful books I have ever read. Sometimes an author can make it so real, it’s almost too real, like the nightmare you can’t wake up from.
I passed the book along to some reading friends, and each one had the same reaction.
“WHY am I reading this? It’s awful!”
It IS awful, and, I suspect, so awful because if you have a child you think might have psychopathic tendencies, your life might be a nightmare. And you live with a sense that this isn’t going to end well, and it must be like waiting for the guillotine to fall and chop off your head.
What I didn’t know was that they’ve made it a movie. I haven’t seen any mention of it in the United States, but I’m told it’s opened in England.
The trailer captures some of the terror of the book. I’d suggest you read – or listen to – the book, by Lionel Shriver, before you see the movie. I honestly don’t know if I can go see it, it’s that scary for me. I reviewed We Need to Talk About Kevin, the book, here.
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It is an awful book! Couldn’t finish it. Scaref
I am astonished, Mrm. It is a very hard book to read, and you are one of the brave and courageous women I met in Kuwait. It probably helped me that my friend and I were both reading it and discussing it, even ten time zones apart. And I think it is significant that we still think about this book and talk about it years later – it’s a book that really makes you think.
So I ask you this – can you identify what it is that made it so scary for you?
Children, at least in my idealistic mode of thinking, should symbolize innocence and
Whimsy. Kevin is/was neither. I have had some experience with ppl with psychopathic violent tendencies but never a child. Reminds me of those kids from The Shining. Creepyf
Creepy – yes. Terrifying. Imagine bearing such a child. Imagine raising a child who was missing something essential to it’s humanity. It would be a mother’s worst nightmare. I think one of the very worst parts through the book, from the very beginning, is that we question, along with the narrator, whether or not she was responsible. She’s willing to take the blame. It reinforces your point, that we think of children as innocent, and if we have one who seems to be other, it is so unthinkable that we would rather blame ourselves, as mothers, for our failures, rather than think the child is not right. Society will blame the mother, too.
I met a woman was a little off, and she told me her son was in prison and would never get out, he had done bad things. I never asked what those things were. The woman was a broken person, infinitely lonely and fragile, and I felt so sorry for her.