Lionel Shriver
Published April 14th 2003
Fair enough, this is not the most groundbreaking of modern novels but I read it a couple of years ago as a number of other people in my literature class had chosen it for their comparative coursework. Despite reading this from a sceptical angle, my reluctance to enjoy this book was greatly overpowered by Shriver's narrative charm.
The concept of innate evil is one that arises within psychology, biology and ethics and I believe that this book brings to life every parent's nightmare and has a haunting aura. Although this book is written from the perspective of the character of Eva (the eponymous character's mother), the idea of somebody being born evil may evoke some feeling of empathy towards our antagonist as we're led to believe that there is nobody to blame. This sympathy towards the character of Kevin is of course shocking and may leave the reader with feelings of guilt and disgust; not dissimilar to Vladamir Nabokov's character of Humbert in Lolita.
Another key feature of this novel which I found particularly well portrayed is that of understanding. As this is written as an epistolary and first person narrative we automatically learn to empathise with the narrative voice of Eva. The struggle that Shriver creates between husband and wife is heartbreaking. The way in which the character of Franklin (Kevin's father) fails to see a single flaw in his son is almost pantomime-esque as we see the antagonist expertly fluctuate between evil towards his mother and clichéd "gee-wizz" enthusiasm towards his father. This is extremely frustrating as the reader knows the depths of Kevin's deviousness whilst Franklin remains completely ignorant. The rift that this creates between the characters of Franklin and Eva, and we see how Eva becomes unable to vocalise her concerns towards her husband; which is received as all the more tragic as we read of the strength and beauty of their lives before Kevin.
Remaining within the boundaries of conventional tragedy, we read of Eva's flaws which present her as human thus making it much easier to empathise with her. Another feature of this novel which I found particularly genius was Shriver's use of foreshadowing which was subtle enough not to give anything away to the reader, yet explicit enough for us to immediately trace back to the roots a certain scenario (eg. Kevin's favourite book was Robin Hood). This tied in with the way in which Kevin is established as diabolical with deep schemes and surprisingly high inter-personal intelligence which allows him to know exactly how to cause a range of human emotions to another person with minimal effort.
Despite my opinion that this is an extremely well written novel, I have several criticisms. Firstly is the length of the novel. Although I do not regard almost any of this book to be irrelevant, Shriver could have easily conveyed the same message and feelings if half of the chapters were taken out. For example we read several times of eg. Franklin's unconditional positive regard of his son; we needn't read every time something bitter occurs due to Kevin that the character of Franklin will automatically forgive or excuse him. I found it dangerously close to spoon feeding and rather tedious as after a while it became predictable. A second downside to this novel is the way in which some things could easily be predicted. I don't want to give away any of the plot but it did immediately strike me that the character of Franklin never wrote back.
However Shriver is vastly forgiven on the basis of her genius yet understandable complexity, beautifully accurate insight into a woman's mind and insecurities and the brave portrayal of a taboo which both entices and terrifies us.
And apparently they've started filming the screen adaptation -can't wait!
3.5/5
Two brilliant film adaptations have also been produced; my favourite being the colour version as it remains true to the book as well as Dominique Swain flawlessly encapsulating the character of Dolores Hayes' mischief, beauty and tragedy.
