We Need To Talk About Kevin
by Lionel Shriver
c. 2003
Counterpoint: New York
400 pages
by Lionel Shriver
c. 2003
Counterpoint: New York
400 pages
So this book was a Good Morning America book choice back when the cool thing was for TV shows to have a book of the month. The whole "Oprah's book club makes a relative unknown into a bestselling author" trend.
I'm not sure if Good Morning America worked out for Ms. Shriver as well as Oprah might have, I got this book for $1.99 on the Barnes and Noble super clearance shelf, but that doesn't really mean anything.
Anyway, I knew what the book was about to start. It's the story of a kid who ends up going on one of those school shooting rampages a la Columbine. That's not a spoiler, you know that the little boy grows up to be a killer from the beginning. It's a given.
Still the title and the vague remembrance of the discussion on GMA suggested to me that this was going to be a book about the more immediate signs, about the people trying to intervene and failing to prevent the absolute worst, about the hints that an unsuspecting mother should have seen, about the dangers of failing to heed the warning of putting off that "we need to talk about Kevin" conversation with a well meaning and concerned teacher.
And while, in some ways, I suppose it is about that, overall, it's not. This is a book about temperament. This is a book about psychopathy. This is a book about the fact that some of these kids are just born that way, or at least they might be. In this case it certainly seems that way.
Of course, I found that perspective very interesting from an academic standpoint. These are the kinds of kids that we are trying to figure out at work. It's these kids whose brains we're scanning with the hope of finding a way to identify them, and eventually finding a way to understand them enough to be able to help them before they kill 11 people with a crossbow. At least, that's the long term goal.
The book takes the form of letters, written by the mother of Kevin, our mass murderer, to his father. You are meant to think that mom and dad have just separated, I think, but you would have to be dense not to know that Dad is dead. I suppose that is a spoiler, but if you don't smell something wrong when she visits the depressed in-laws alone in the second chapter, then you might not figure it out when she finds him pocurpined with arrows in the back yard either. (It seems I'm feeling a little cynical this evening. Sorry.)
Anyway, in the letters, she describes Kevin's entire development, from birth and a constantly crying infancy though a malicious toddlerhood and so on. And the point, clear from the beginning, is that Kevin was just born this way. She talks about the way that he sees the world, suggesting that he was bored, that he just doesn't see the point of the whole life thing, but of course to me, this screams "neurological! This woman would be interested in our research!"
And maybe she would be, or maybe not, maybe it says something about me that in reading of the polarly opposite personalities that Kevin manages to present to his two parents from a very young age (dad thinks he's a saint, mom senses something much more sinister) I can't help but think what a wonderfully high score the kid would get on impression management.
But it's interesting to watch him develop. I admit that I was very involved in the book, that I enjoyed reading it and found myself not at all upset about time spent waiting for things while it was in my bag. There's something about the reflectiveness of the narrative, the back and forth between her accounts of her current visits with Kevin in prison and the story of his development. You want to understand him, you want to know what's going to happen, even though you already know.
I talked earlier about those books where you know how it ends, but you still need to see how they take it from here to there. This there is distant, particularly horrible, and even though he's a brat, a manipulative little twit from the very beginning, it still seems a long way from start to finish. You need a lot of story to get from crying baby and ruining handmade presents as a toddler, to collecting computer viruses and torturing your younger sister to a killing spree, there's steps in there that somehow I wanted to understand.
But really, there's nothing to understand, nothing that clearly drives him to it, no abuse or horror that causes Kevin to lash out at the world. I think that if I didn't have the perspective of someone who's working on research trying to understand and eventually to help kids that just don't have empathy, kids that don't feel bad when they do something wrong and will manipulate you until they get what they want I would have found this book singularly depression. If we can't figure out their brain chemistry, connectivity, activity and anatomy to maybe hopefully help them, then what's the point of all this. Kevin is not deprived. His parents are wealthy, and though his mother is not totally thrilled with this idea, she stays home with him full time, and his father dotes on him to a level that's almost inexplicable. I'm not saying that everything was perfect, Mom admits that she wasn't sure that she wanted him, admits that she didn't feel that instant connection that mothers are supposed to feel when they hold their children for the first time, and sure, maybe he felt that detachment and it contributed to his development, but this is not the victim of a horrible tortured childhood, at least not an outwardly tortured childhood.
And this is not a book about the failure of parents to recognize signs or the cruelty of children turning children into killers. This is a book about a bad kid. A kid that's destructive and manipulative from his toddler years. It's not like the help came a moment too late and the appointments for the conference that might have saved him were scheduled for that afternoon, until he shot the school up that morning. It seems, reading this account that Kevin was hopeless from the start. Sure, maybe he feels some regret at the thought of his upcoming transfer to adult prison, and yes, in the end maybe his mother still loves him in spite of it all, but this is not a story of hope, not a story of help, not a story in which you feel that if only someone had heeded the advice "we need to talk about Kevin" then maybe this all could have been prevented. It seems like maybe it couldn't have been prevented, that maybe he was too manipulative, too good at the divide and conquer between his parents, too good at getting away with it. It seems reading this that his desire to get away with it is innate. His desire to hurt and punish is something he felt from birth.
And if you believe that he was just born that way, that his temperament was a major, if not the major contributor to the events of Thursday, as it's repeatedly referred to, if you believe that maybe he was just born that way, then what does that say about the world? About humanity? About children?
If we can't prevent this, if this violence is just a part of some of us, and it's out of our control... It's not a pretty picture.
And with that, I'm going to get back to scheduling some target kids for scans... Because again, even here, I choose hope.
I'm not sure if Good Morning America worked out for Ms. Shriver as well as Oprah might have, I got this book for $1.99 on the Barnes and Noble super clearance shelf, but that doesn't really mean anything.
Anyway, I knew what the book was about to start. It's the story of a kid who ends up going on one of those school shooting rampages a la Columbine. That's not a spoiler, you know that the little boy grows up to be a killer from the beginning. It's a given.
Still the title and the vague remembrance of the discussion on GMA suggested to me that this was going to be a book about the more immediate signs, about the people trying to intervene and failing to prevent the absolute worst, about the hints that an unsuspecting mother should have seen, about the dangers of failing to heed the warning of putting off that "we need to talk about Kevin" conversation with a well meaning and concerned teacher.
And while, in some ways, I suppose it is about that, overall, it's not. This is a book about temperament. This is a book about psychopathy. This is a book about the fact that some of these kids are just born that way, or at least they might be. In this case it certainly seems that way.
Of course, I found that perspective very interesting from an academic standpoint. These are the kinds of kids that we are trying to figure out at work. It's these kids whose brains we're scanning with the hope of finding a way to identify them, and eventually finding a way to understand them enough to be able to help them before they kill 11 people with a crossbow. At least, that's the long term goal.
The book takes the form of letters, written by the mother of Kevin, our mass murderer, to his father. You are meant to think that mom and dad have just separated, I think, but you would have to be dense not to know that Dad is dead. I suppose that is a spoiler, but if you don't smell something wrong when she visits the depressed in-laws alone in the second chapter, then you might not figure it out when she finds him pocurpined with arrows in the back yard either. (It seems I'm feeling a little cynical this evening. Sorry.)
Anyway, in the letters, she describes Kevin's entire development, from birth and a constantly crying infancy though a malicious toddlerhood and so on. And the point, clear from the beginning, is that Kevin was just born this way. She talks about the way that he sees the world, suggesting that he was bored, that he just doesn't see the point of the whole life thing, but of course to me, this screams "neurological! This woman would be interested in our research!"
And maybe she would be, or maybe not, maybe it says something about me that in reading of the polarly opposite personalities that Kevin manages to present to his two parents from a very young age (dad thinks he's a saint, mom senses something much more sinister) I can't help but think what a wonderfully high score the kid would get on impression management.
But it's interesting to watch him develop. I admit that I was very involved in the book, that I enjoyed reading it and found myself not at all upset about time spent waiting for things while it was in my bag. There's something about the reflectiveness of the narrative, the back and forth between her accounts of her current visits with Kevin in prison and the story of his development. You want to understand him, you want to know what's going to happen, even though you already know.
I talked earlier about those books where you know how it ends, but you still need to see how they take it from here to there. This there is distant, particularly horrible, and even though he's a brat, a manipulative little twit from the very beginning, it still seems a long way from start to finish. You need a lot of story to get from crying baby and ruining handmade presents as a toddler, to collecting computer viruses and torturing your younger sister to a killing spree, there's steps in there that somehow I wanted to understand.
But really, there's nothing to understand, nothing that clearly drives him to it, no abuse or horror that causes Kevin to lash out at the world. I think that if I didn't have the perspective of someone who's working on research trying to understand and eventually to help kids that just don't have empathy, kids that don't feel bad when they do something wrong and will manipulate you until they get what they want I would have found this book singularly depression. If we can't figure out their brain chemistry, connectivity, activity and anatomy to maybe hopefully help them, then what's the point of all this. Kevin is not deprived. His parents are wealthy, and though his mother is not totally thrilled with this idea, she stays home with him full time, and his father dotes on him to a level that's almost inexplicable. I'm not saying that everything was perfect, Mom admits that she wasn't sure that she wanted him, admits that she didn't feel that instant connection that mothers are supposed to feel when they hold their children for the first time, and sure, maybe he felt that detachment and it contributed to his development, but this is not the victim of a horrible tortured childhood, at least not an outwardly tortured childhood.
And this is not a book about the failure of parents to recognize signs or the cruelty of children turning children into killers. This is a book about a bad kid. A kid that's destructive and manipulative from his toddler years. It's not like the help came a moment too late and the appointments for the conference that might have saved him were scheduled for that afternoon, until he shot the school up that morning. It seems, reading this account that Kevin was hopeless from the start. Sure, maybe he feels some regret at the thought of his upcoming transfer to adult prison, and yes, in the end maybe his mother still loves him in spite of it all, but this is not a story of hope, not a story of help, not a story in which you feel that if only someone had heeded the advice "we need to talk about Kevin" then maybe this all could have been prevented. It seems like maybe it couldn't have been prevented, that maybe he was too manipulative, too good at the divide and conquer between his parents, too good at getting away with it. It seems reading this that his desire to get away with it is innate. His desire to hurt and punish is something he felt from birth.
And if you believe that he was just born that way, that his temperament was a major, if not the major contributor to the events of Thursday, as it's repeatedly referred to, if you believe that maybe he was just born that way, then what does that say about the world? About humanity? About children?
If we can't prevent this, if this violence is just a part of some of us, and it's out of our control... It's not a pretty picture.
And with that, I'm going to get back to scheduling some target kids for scans... Because again, even here, I choose hope.
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