The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047

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Actually, it's vaguely framed around the Florida debacle in the 2000 presidential elections, but that event is used to throw into relief how little political issues matter when your family has been destroyed. For the most part, the narrator (Eva) talks about Kevin, why she decided to have him, what it was like to raise him, and examine the ways in which she failed as a mother and a wife. Hall, Eleanor (May 24, 2010), "How a death can mould a health reform crusader", ABC Online. Retrieved June 1, 2010. Eva, I worked out, was born in 1945. Part of the time therefore when she would have been considering having a child would have been in the late 1960s, when Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb was hugely influential. With the plethora of reasons for and against having a child that Eva muses on, it is hard to credit that she would have completely missed out on agonising about the problem of over-population. In fact her eventual reason for having her son seems to have been an impromptu masochistic one, which I found barely credible. Similarly, when she chose to have a second child, I cannot believe she would have ignored the warning bells about Kevin, especially when she would not even have a pet dog for fear of what he might do to it. We need to talk about Kevin was painful to read/listen to. It felt like with every sentence that I was advancing through a mass of skewers that were poking my brain and heart. However, I could not stop listening, no matter how uncomfortable it made me going forward. I felt like a voyeur into a woman’s deepest secrets, like I shouldn’t be there. The narrator admits what no mother should, the unspoken taboo, that she did not want to be a mother and that her life was destroyed after giving birth. Did her feelings make her son the monster he became, capable of murdering 9 kids and his teacher? Or was it nature? Could she have changed what happened?

I’m not anti-diversity – but I don’t like quotas. I admit it, I made fun of it, and you are never meant to make a joke around diversity, but I did,” says Shriver. In 2005 BBC Films acquired the rights to adapt the book as a film. [2] Director Lynne Ramsay signed on to direct. [3] It was announced in March 2009 that Tilda Swinton had signed on to star in the film as Eva. [4] Filming began on location in Stamford, Connecticut on April 19, 2010. [5] We Need To Talk About Kevin was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9 and 11, 2011. John C. Reilly plays Franklin and Ezra Miller plays Kevin. The film premiered In Competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, [6] where it was met with praise from film critics. [7] Radio adaptation [ edit ] Shriver expressed her opposition to woke and identity politics in a 2021 interview with The Evening Standard, stating that "I don't like discrimination of any kind" but adding "there is nothing malign, initially at least, in the impulse to pursue a fairer society. The biggest problem with the 'woke’ is their methods - too often involving name calling, silencing, vengefulness, and predation." [39] Da questo libro, una bravissima regista inglese, Lynne Ramsey ha tratto un film: ha impiegato anni a scrivere la sceneggiatura, l’ha modificata secondo le esigenze del budget, e alla fine ha realizzato un film dallo stesso titolo, che è semplicemente magnifico, stupendo, devastante, come e oltre il libro. Un adattamento superbo, che conserva intatta tutta l’anima del libro, rimedia alle sbavature del romanzo, e crea un’opera a se stante, che io avvicino ai capolavori. Dove i fatti mostrati sono reali, o forse immaginari, sempre difficile capirlo, perché siamo dentro la testa di Eva. Tilda Swinton è perfetta nella parte di Eva – e Kevin è indimenticabile.

In August 2023 Shriver gave an interview with the Evening Standard in which she claimed "You don’t have free speech in the UK anymore". [40] Personal life [ edit ]

The book was told in a series of letters by Kevin's mom, Eva to her husband, Franklin. Most of the letters Eva talks about Kevin, why she decided to have him, what it was like raising him, ways that she might of failed at being a mother, and confessions of her own about Kevin.She voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. [27] In September 2022, Shriver released an open letter in which she endorsed Republican Ron DeSantis for the 2024 U.S. Presidential election. In the letter, she criticized both Biden and Donald Trump as poor leaders, and praised DeSantis for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, banning critical race theory in schools, opposing transgender women from competing in women's sports, and passing the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act; while noting that she disagrees with him on abortion. [27] This is a personal matter for me, and not only because I’m already 64 myself. Both my parents are still alive – although in my mother’s case that may be stretching the meaning of the word. My father is 93; my mother turns 90 in July. Watching their old age progress has been mystifying, painful, and sometimes heartening. It is now abundantly clear to me why this novel is such a popular selection for book clubs the world over -- it is a family saga that features a sordid tragedy, filled with abhorrent, compelling, wretched, titillating detail. It is a book meant to conquer and divide its readers, elicit strong emotion, a take-no-prisoners approach that leaves you anything but detached and unmoved. I can't imagine anyone coming to the end of this ordeal (for it is an ordeal) and not have some opinion, if not a plethora of them, on the nature vs. nurture debate and parental culpability in a child's deviant behavior.

We Need to Talk About Kevin μάλλον θα το έχει πάρει το αυτί σας. Ανήκουν σε αυτά τα μυθιστορήματα που είναι γνωστά στους βιβλόφιλους, έχουν καθιερωθεί στο αναγνωστικό ασυνείδητο ως "καλά βιβλία", ακόμα κι αν δεν ξέρει κανείς κανέναν που να τα έχει διαβάσει. Συνήθως έχουν γίνει και ταινία, οπότε ο μύθος συντηρείται. Όταν κανείς τολμάει να διαβάσει τέτοια βιβλία, βιβλία καλά, από συγγραφείς που δεν είναι στην επικαιρότητα παρά μόνο όταν κάνουν το μπαμ, δεν ξέρει τι να περιμένει. Εγώ ένιωσα να πιάνω το βιβλίο και να το ανασύρω μέσα από την αχλή που περιβάλλει ξεχασμένα, καταξιωμένα βιβλία. Chi sono io lettore, sono Eva o sono Kevin? Posso restare a guardare o devo prendere parte, e schierarmi? Now Eva writes letters to her husband confessing how she loses her control to break her son’s arm and surprisingly Kevin never gives anything away even though he turned her life into hell and Eva visits her son in the prison as well. This question, which I think is at the heart of the book, is not as clearly answered as I'm making it out to me. In fact, Lionel Shriver, in writing about readers' responses to this work, says she has seen two camps: Shriver had written eight novels, of which seven had been published, before she wrote We Need to Talk About Kevin, which she called her "make or break" novel due to the years of "professional disappointment" and "virtual obscurity" preceding it.Shriver has argued against migration into the UK, in 2021 she wrote an article which stated "For westerners to passively accept and even abet incursions by foreigners so massive that the native-born are effectively surrendering their territory without a shot fired is biologically perverse." [24] [25] [26] Political views & activism [ edit ]

A novel that's elegant & overly articulate--yet VERY readable. So much dexterity is on display here ("Damn what an amazing writer!" is a perpetual thought while reading this), with a prose made by some wizard's alchemy, a talent-filled intuition, & a distinct view that's brutal & uncomfortably honest. Shriver outshines even Flaubert himself: THIS is the very core of feminism, of individualism (move over Madame Bovary... you cared more for the idea of love than anything else, anyway, & never really gave a hoot about child rearing). Malik, Kenan (September 5, 2021). "To be truly British, the country needs to stay largely white. Really, Lionel Shriver?". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712 . Retrieved September 17, 2021. Don and Peggy with their grandchild Alan in Coralville, Iowa, 1993. Photograph: Courtesy of Lionel Shriver

Whether or not you are a parent (I am not), you cannot help but feel that you've been given a rare insight into someone's worst nightmare, because you have -- whatever angle you are viewing from -- and there is nowhere to go to depersonalize or escape it. In 2009, she donated the short story "Long Time, No See" to Oxfam's " Ox-Tales" project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the Fire collection. [11] It is not a fast read: even though Lionel Shriver writes beautiful prose, she writes about ugly things. Reading it is almost like self-torture under hypnotism; you don't want to do it, but once you are into it, there's no way to stop. I think the relationship between mother and son (a son trying desperately to get a reaction from a mother who not only was ambivalent about his birth, but doesn't like him as a child either) is overshadowed by the horrific detals of the larger story. The nuances of the relationship -- and the truths about how far a child will go to gain his parents' attention -- are lost in the carnage. Alla lunga, Franklin, il padre, sembra un po’ troppo cieco e sordo, e non si capisce come faccia Eva a esserne ancora così innamorata.