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We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel
(OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, OverDrive Listen)

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Published:
HarperAudio 2011
Format:
OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, OverDrive Listen
Edition:
Unabridged
Status:
Available from OverDrive
Description

"Impossible to put down. . . . Who, in the end, needs to talk about Kevin? Maybe we all do." — Boston Globe

Acclaimed author Lionel Shriver's gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry

Shriver's resonant story of a mother's unsettling quest to understand her teenage son's deadly violence, her own ambivalence toward motherhood, and the explosive link between them reverberates with the haunting power of high hopes shattered by dark realities.

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.

Like Shriver's charged and incisive later novels, including So Much for That and The Post-Birthday World, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a piercing, unforgettable, and penetrating exploration of violence, family ties, and responsibility.

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Street Date:
12/27/2011
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780062188076
Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Lionel Shriver. (2011). We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel. Unabridged HarperAudio.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Lionel Shriver. 2011. We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel. HarperAudio.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel. HarperAudio, 2011.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Lionel Shriver. We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel. Unabridged HarperAudio, 2011.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
Copy Details
LibraryOwnedAvailable
Anne Arundel County Public Library21
Staff View
Grouped Work ID:
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Go To Grouped Work
Needs Update?:
No
Date Added:
Jan 29, 2021 18:21:05
Date Updated:
Jan 29, 2021 18:21:05
Last Metadata Check:
Mar 25, 2024 17:26:19
Last Metadata Change:
Sep 19, 2023 07:13:43
Last Availability Check:
Mar 25, 2024 17:26:21
Last Availability Change:
Mar 25, 2024 17:26:21
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
Mar 28, 2024 04:05:51

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"Impossible to put down. . . . Who, in the end, needs to talk about Kevin? Maybe we all do." — Boston Globe

Acclaimed author Lionel Shriver's gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry

Shriver's resonant story of a mother's unsettling quest to understand her teenage son's deadly violence, her own ambivalence toward motherhood, and the explosive link between them reverberates with the haunting power of high hopes shattered by dark realities.

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.

Like Shriver's charged and incisive later novels, including So Much for That and The Post-Birthday World, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a piercing, unforgettable, and penetrating exploration of violence, family ties, and responsibility.

reviews
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        Starred review from March 24, 2003
        A starred or boxed review indicates a book of outstanding quality. A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a starred or boxed review. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN Lionel Shriver. Counterpoint, $25 (416p) ISBN 1-58243-267-8 A number of fictional attempts have been made to portray what might lead a teenager to kill a number of schoolmates or teachers, Columbine style, but Shriver's is the most triumphantly accomplished by far. A gifted journalist as well as the author of seven novels, she brings to her story a keen understanding of the intricacies of marital and parental relationships as well as a narrative pace that is both compelling and thoughtful. Eva Khatchadourian is a smart, skeptical New Yorker whose impulsive marriage to Franklin, a much more conventional person, bears fruit, to her surprise and confessed disquiet, in baby Kevin. From the start Eva is ambivalent about him, never sure if she really wanted a child, and he is balefully hostile toward her; only good-old-boy Franklin, hoping for the best, manages to overlook his son's faults as he grows older, a largely silent, cynical, often malevolent child. The later birth of a sister who is his opposite in every way, deeply affectionate and fragile, does nothing to help, and Eva always suspects his role in an accident that befalls little Celia. The narrative, which leads with quickening and horrifying inevitability to the moment when Kevin massacres seven of his schoolmates and a teacher at his upstate New York high school, is told as a series of letters from Eva to an apparently estranged Franklin, after Kevin has been put in a prison for juvenile offenders. This seems a gimmicky way to tell the story, but is in fact surprisingly effective in its picture of an affectionate couple who are poles apart, and enables Shriver to pull off a huge and crushing shock far into her tale. It's a harrowing, psychologically astute, sometimes even darkly humorous novel, with a clear-eyed, hard-won ending and a tough-minded sense of the difficult, often painful human enterprise. 4-city author tour. (May)Forecast:The subject, unfortunately, is nearly always timely, and this by no means sensationalist account can be confidently sold as the best novel of its kind; in fact, the extent of the author's insights should make her very promotable.

      • premium: True
      • source: AudioFile Magazine
      • content: Stop reading now--well, in a minute. Go out immediately and get your hands on this audiobook. You will be rewarded with a perfect, if harrowing, literary entertainment that will be hard to put aside or forget. Eva Khatchadourian, an accomplished fiftyish woman, is writing letters to her beloved absent husband, Franklin, recalling their lives together as parents of son Kevin, who, at nearly 16, commits a massacre at his suburban New York high school. Rosenblat's Eva is unsparing, sardonic, and lacerating, portraying motherhood as a nightmarish reflection of the idyll it is commonly assumed to be in our culture. The last cassette contains an interview with Orange Prize-winner Shriver, who is every bit as fascinating and provocative as her book. M.O. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
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"Impossible to put down. . . . Who, in the end, needs to talk about Kevin? Maybe we all do." — Boston Globe

Acclaimed author Lionel Shriver's gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry

Shriver's resonant story of a mother's unsettling quest to understand her teenage son's deadly violence, her own ambivalence toward motherhood, and the explosive link between them reverberates with the haunting power of high hopes shattered by dark realities.

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...

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