We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

I have been waiting in the library queue for this book for several months. It is a series of letters from a woman to her estranged husband concerning her son, Kevin who has just been incarcerated in a juvenile facility for a school shooting. It was interesting to read this so shortly after Lamb's The Hour I First Believed, which was about the Columbine shootings, from the perspective of a victim's husband. Kevin's mother never really wanted to have children. She runs a successful travel company and treasures her independence. From the moment her son is born, she is unable to bond with him, and he exhibits a determined defiance toward her. From a young age, he is hell-bent on destroying anything that he senses is loved by another person - and his mother explores, through her letters, whether his evil is innate, or whether he sensed her inability to love him. While the mother senses the danger in her child - and struggles with his lack of acceptance among his peers, the father consistently makes excuses for his son and fails to read his son's condescension and manipulation. I found the perspective of this book interesting. When kids engage in nonsensical violence, I think people either assume the kid is simply a bad seed, or they blame the parents for not teaching them properly. At different points in this book, I found myself angry with the mother who was unable to show her son any sort of affection, angry with the clueless enabling father, and angry with a child who was unable to engage in empathy. Accordingly, I think Shriver did a fine job exploring the various aspects of the never-ending enigma of what creates a criminal, and the complex interrelation between organic and environmental factors.