SPOILER FREE REVIEW

I picked this book up in a charity shop a few months ago. I'd heard of the movie yet had no idea what it was about, and was intrigued by the back:

Eva never really wanted to be a mother - and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

So yes, this book is written as a series of letters from Eva to Franklin, chronicling first them talking about having kids, Kevin's birth, and his childhood up to what Eva calls Thursday.

I loved this book. It is honestly one of the best books I've read this year, and it will stay with me for a long time. I started it two or three weeks ago and finished it last night, and when I finished it I cried for about twenty minutes.

Why is this book so good?

1) Eva is an unreliable narrator.

Eva is recounting instances of Kevin's life to Franklin, strange things he did as a child and things she suspected him of. But the thing is that since it's all from her point of view, as a reader you can't fully know that that's true, that Kevin actually did those things and it wasn't Eva's paranoia/she wasn't the terrible mother everyone made her out to be.

Personally, I believe Eva tried her best. She had her faults, but she loved her children, and just found Kevin very hard to deal with.

2) Nature vs nurture.

A question the author poses in her notes at the end of the book is that of nature vs nurture. Do you think Kevin was evil from birth, or was it the cold absent mother in his life who set him on that path?

3) It seems predictable, but it isn't

At first, probably like you're all thinking, I thought Eva would just recount times Kevin was manipulative/evil, talk quickly about the school massacre and that would be it.

Fuck no. Near the end Eva finally reveals one of the most heartbreaking moments of Thursday, and this is what made me cry.

4) Kevin isn't cliched.

He's not a cliched "evil" kid, he's got depths, admittedly apparently even more evil depths, but Eva sometimes wonders if she's paranoid and an awful mother, and if Kevin really was just a normal kid before Thursday.

I just wanted to talk about this book because I thought it was pretty amazing.