Nov. 26, 2003 — Good Morning America’s latest book club selection is We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, which tells the story of a teen who goes on a killing spree at his high school.
The question of who is to blame for teenage atrocity tortures the book’s narrator, Eva Khatchadourian, whose son, Kevin, commits the murders and ends up in a facility for juvenile offenders.
The novel raises the issue of whether parents are responsible for their children’s actions. Do those who commit heinous crimes do so because of something innate or is it because of their environment? Are parents to blame when teens turn into criminals?
Author Lionel Shriver covered some of these questions in an online Q & A, with Good Morning America viewers who have read We Need to Talk About Kevin.
Read an excerpt of We Need to Talk About Kevin and take a look at the following transcript of her online Q & A.
Question: Hi Lionel! I am the founder of the Masters Book Club, which recommended your novel to GMA! We chose your book because of your wonderful writing style, while talking of issues of today. We loved the language, and the emotions of the novel. I, of course, loved the book! I am wondering, how did you come up with the idea to write the book? When you started writing, did you know how the end would turn out ? Who did you base the character of Eva on? She was so strong, yet so weak! I almost see myself as Eva in a way, but give her way more credit than any situation I would encounter like that! Being a teacher, I don’t know if I feel Eva and Franklin were to blame, but in ways I do feel they were to blame. It’s such a profound book. We are so excited for you to be part of the “Read This!” book club, and we are so happy we could share this with you! Melissa Svoboda of the Masters Book Club.
— Melissa Wauconda, Illinois
Answer:: Hi, Melissa. I’m delighted you became so engrossed by Kevin, and I owe your book club a debt; I take the “Read This!” selection as a great compliment. You raise some key questions. I got the idea for this novel when I was 42, childless, in a stable long-term relationship, and trying to decide whether to bite the bullet and have a kid. And this was the same year that all those news reports started coming in, sometimes weeks or days apart, about school murder rampages. I found myself taking a personal dislike to the killers. So I started wondering: what if you felt that same personal dislike, but for your own son? As I wrote the novel, I used it to explore my misgivings about becoming a mother. What was I so afraid of? I grew to appreciate that there was a whole lot to fear in parenthood. Ever since completing the book I’ve admired people who, all too aware of how much can go wrong, still willingly take the risk and have children. Ultimately I concluded that I was too selfish, and too much of a coward, to become a mother. I’m surely one of those women who shouldn’t have a child; I’m not cut out for it. But I am truly grateful to the women — and men — who devote so much time and energy to raising the next generation. I did begin the novel with foreknowledge of the ending. All novelists don’t work this way, but I almost always know my endings before I write the first page. In this case, it was useful to be able to plant clues, and prepare for the ending, without, I hope, giving the game away.My narrator Eva was based not only on myself, but on any number of other women I know who share my relation to motherhood. You put your finger on it: Eva is strong professionally, and has a fierce sense of herself. Yet she is weak in other respects — not naturally very generous, and terrified of letting her borders bleed in the way that parenthood demands. It takes a certain kind of power to put yourself second to someone else, and a certain kind of self-possession to give yourself freely away. I regard myself as having this same weakness, and I rue it. Lastly, as for blame, you and I see eye to eye. That is, Kevin’s murderousness both is and is not his parents’ fault. I think culpability in those real-life school shootings is complicated, so I saw no reason to make it black-and-white in fiction; simple finger-pointing can be satisfying, because you have your “answer” as to why this terrible thing has happened, but what good is it, when the answer is a lie?
Question: I am a part of the Master’s Book Club who recommended this book to GMA. First I would like to give you the credit you deserve for a well-written book, our book club loved it! One of the many questions that continued to pop into my head is, “How is it that Eva and Kevin had such a disconnection from the beginning?” Even as a baby he knew how to push her buttons. As a teacher I kept wondering if I would be able to identify such a troubled child like Kevin. The way that Kevin was described, I would consider him as being “different.” Is there something that I could have done to help him or to get him to express his feelings? How is that Franklin was so naive in this whole thing? Or did he really know, but didn’t want to admit it? I really felt sorry for Eva right from the start. She wanted a child, a child to carry her name, and look what she got. She hoped that a second child would make things better, and sadly it just made things worse for herself and her daughter. Everyone suffered here. What was it that bothered Kevin that made him take out his anger on his mother and change her life forever? Only once was there a sense of a connection between the two. When he offered her a computer virus and she had already put it on her computer. Even though she hated what he did to her, she was loyal to her child and continued to visit him. Does she even love him as a child or to simply show that she would be loyal to her child because he is her child? When she asked him why he did it, I was hoping he would have given her an answer. Is there an answer? Again, an excellent book, and our book club was so happy to be able to share your book with the GMA viewers. We hope that you and your book get the attention you deserve. — Miriam RodriguezFox Lake, Illinois
Answer: Miriam, thanks for your thoughtful response. So many good questions! All relationships are capable of starting off on the wrong foot, and the parent-child one is surely no exception. Eva had grave reservations about becoming a mother to begin with, and her anxiety colored her relationship to her son even before he was born. When her baby refused to suckle (which does happen, I discovered, and an infant’s aversion to the breast is not that uncommon, either), she couldn’t help but take it as a personal rejection, even though she knew this interpretation was irrational. Moreover, as Kevin grew older, she grew to recognize her own emotional stinginess mirrored in her son. That is, much of the antagonism between mother and son in this book derives from the fact that they are too much alike. You often despise in others what you despise in yourself. I do think that often teachers or other outsiders are more capable of reaching disturbed kids than the parents. Sometimes — especially in adolescence — parents and children get on opposite sides; they’re not in league, they’re at war. Neutral parties have a better chance. (I had particular teachers who made a huge difference to me while I was growing up, and I could resort to them in a way I never could resort to my parents, who in some ways constituted The Opposition.) In Kevin, of course, there is one teacher who likes Kevin, is concerned for him, and seems to have his number. But Kevin is uncomfortable being found out, because look at the thanks she gets … as I mentioned earlier, I don’t like to be simplistic. But as to “why” Kevin did what he did, the crude psychological explanation would run: to get his mother’s attention; in however wayward a fashion, to earn his mother’s love; and at the same time to exact revenge on his mother for having been emotionally cold. For Kevin is aware from Day Zero that his mother’s feeling for him is lacking. But perhaps more importantly, Kevin has been manufacturing bogus “explanations” for why he murdered his classmates for the better part of the novel. None of them ring true. In the end, yes, his mother asks him point blank: “Why?” But long last, Kevin has no idea why. This wasn’t meant as a dodge of authorial responsibility. Rather, when Kevin reaches the point that he finds what he did incomprehensible — when killing those people starts to seem to have been stupid, and pointless, and without any justification — he is finally growing up. He has joined the audience of his own crime, joined the rest of us in civilization, who also find his grotesque stunt unfathomable. This dawning of perplexity allows for the first glimmerings of remorse. It’s only if he sees those murders as foolish, and unreasoning, and therefore as atrocious and wasteful, that he can genuinely regret them. I feel strongly that, in relation to the real high school shootings in the news, we have to resist the urge to “explain” them and therefore to make them seem sensible. I think we should stay with our first reaction: that these incidents are nuts. And that there is absolutely no good reason on God’s green earth that white, middle-class American teenagers should kill their classmates, even if the shooters been “bullied” or have watched unpleasant videos.
Question: Did this mother seek medical and or mental help for this child? — PatriciaHarrisburg Pa.,
Answer:: Patricia, Kevin does go to a psychiatrist in the latter part of the novel, though I concede I didn’t play this up in the text. The psychiatrist, credibly I think, puts him on Prozac. Kevin subsequently deploys the fact that he’d been taking Prozac to argue for diminished capacity during in his trial; a few documented cases do suggest that a small percentage of Prozac users have a psychotic reaction to the drug. However, that connection remains clinically unproven, and Kevin’s pharmaceutical defense doesn’t succeed in getting him off — though it may contribute to a relatively light sentence. I confess that I underplayed the psychiatric resort in the novel because I have little faith in this method of solving problems. It’s good that there are professionals to turn to, and sometimes it’s a relief just to be doing something about a problem for doing-something’s sake, whether or not the solution itself is effective. But I have any number of friends (in NYC, of course … ) who have been up to the neck in psychotherapy for years and years. Frankly, I’m not impressed. Are these folks any more sane, do they understand themselves and other people any better than the rest of us? Not as far as I can see. In fact, if anything psychotherapy seems to make people just that little bit more neurotic. Sink enough money into your problems, and you become attached to them, like Gucci handbags or Audi sedans. Big-ticket items like ten-grand obsessive-compulsive disorders you don’t just throw away.
Question: As a Colorado native, with a son who knew the parents of one of the Columbine killers, and who felt they were good parents, at least early on my son knew them, I am interested in whether you based your novel on a particular boy or was it a composite? I also was a part time elementary school counselor … was the character too far out?
— IrvaGreen Valley, Arizona
Answer: I’m very interested in your characterization of the Columbine killers’ parents, Irva. I find it totally believable that they tried to raise their kids right. Sure, parents have to be responsible, and some aren’t. But sometimes you do everything you know to do and the whole thing still goes sour. That must be soul-destroying, and confusing to boot. It is certainly possible to do everything in your power to be there for your kid, to teach him right from wrong, all that, and the kid still goes to hell. Children-that is, people-do have a pre-existent nature that parents can’t mold or change. Sometimes parents are just unlucky. And my heart goes out to the Klebolds and Harrises. Whether or not they sometimes fell down on the job, every parent does, at one time or another. One of the reasons I wrote this book is that I was so achingly sympathetic with the real parents of these killers. They must endlessly wrack their brains as to what went wrong and how they might have prevented tragedy. I’m sure none of these parents has been the same since. I did not base Kevin on any one real-life killer, or on anyone I knew. He was a composite of what I most feared in any prospective child of my own. I thought I’d have the hardest time with a child who wasn’t slow, or overweight, or hyperactive, but who was apathetic. Who plain didn’t give a toss, about anything or anybody. You can’t make a kid love life. As for whether the character of Kevin is “too far out”? To the contrary: When I read the newspapers, I worry that Kevin is downright bland.
Question: Why is it that we feel that there needs to be somebody to blame? Wouldn’t everyone have a small something to do with it? Whether the parents missed it, or teachers, or the kid’s friends, it should be shame on everyone.
—Jodee Paris, Texas
Answer: That is an excellent point, Jodee. It’s neater and sweeter to decide, oh, it’s the fault of teachers, or Marilyn Manson, or the mother, but why not spread the blame around a little? Also, let’s not lose the concept of tragedy here. Bad things happen, terrible things, and they don’t always have to be somebody in particular’s fault.I would also argue that, whoever else you drag into the blame game, never lose sight of the person who actually did the deed. I don’t care if the culprit is underage. Oh, there are a few extreme exceptions, whereby, say, a 2-year-old gets hold of his daddy’s gun and shoots his sister, and you can argue that the toddler had no idea what he was doing. But in most instances, you first and foremost blame the criminal. I’m underkeen on, you know, going to court and arguing that you just shot up your workplace because your mother didn’t love you, or someone just spilled coffee on your favorite pair of mittens, just as I’d never blame McDonald’s for getting fat. I’m willing to grant a gradated diminishment of responsibility in relation to an offender’s youth. But don’t tell me that a 15-year-old who shoots his teacher hasn’t a clue he’s doing something wrong.
Question: What kind of research did you do for this book? Did you interview parents of boys that had done this sort of thing for real?
—Lois Thiensvile, Wisconsin
Answer: Lois, I admit that I never interviewed the real-life parents of teenage killers. I was horrified by the idea of hounding people who had already suffered so much. If I were writing nonfiction, that’s a deference that I’d have had to get over. But I was writing a novel. No amount of research was going to make my story up for me, or make my characters real to my readers. When you write fiction, it can be terribly tempting to spend huge amounts of time on “research,” because the real work, making something up from scratch, telling a good story, is so much harder. Now, that said, I did do a whole lot of reading. I spent months on the Internet, reading about the real school shootings, printing out reams of journalism and academic essays about these incidents. I read a number of books about child killers, including some developmental psychology. I’m not sure how much difference all that research made, but it probably didn’t hurt.
Question: I think your book is superb. Some have characterized it as anti-motherhood. In my view, this is an extremely simplistic reading; in fact, it’s just wrong. One of your novel’s most fascinating emotional arcs is the way in which Eva starts out averse to motherhood, yet uncovers love for Kevin not in spite his psychopathic conduct, but as a result of being forced closer to him by virtue of that conduct. In the end, Eva loves Kevin. I have my own theories about the dynamic involved, but I want to hear your reasons: why, finally, does she love him? —Jon London, United Kingdom
Answer: Thanks, Jon. I don’t think Kevin is “anti-motherhood” either. But the book does acknowledge how hard motherhood is, how fantastically demanding. I sometimes think that as much as we sentimentalize motherhood in this country, and play lip-service to what saints mothers are, we accord them surprisingly little respect, and for many professional women the role constitutes a social demotion. More, since we’re increasingly inclined, in bizarre defiance of a cascade of genetic discoveries to the contrary, to blame parents for everything kids do and grow up to be, parenthood is frequently thankless. Why, finally, does Eva come around to loving her son — albeit only when he’s 18 years old? Good question. In the novel’s present tense, Kevin has calculatingly engineered a situation whereby he is all his mother has left. He is family, and family by definition are the folks you can’t pick. They’re the people you don’t necessarily love at the outset, but whom you have to learn to love, because you’re stuck with each other. All through the book Eva has been fighting her son, and by the end she’s too worn out to keep up the war against — well, nature. She’s his mother. Who’s going to care for him if she doesn’t? Whether she likes it or not, Kevin is the only deep, gut tie to the human race remaining to his mother. If she doesn’t cling to it, she’s lost. Nevertheless, one central irony I did intend: Kevin went on a murderous rampage to get his mother’s attention and to earn her love. This gambit, however perverse — it worked.
Question: I have been fascinated with this subject and discussed it with friends in the past. I think parents are responsible if their child skips school, cheats on a test, or lies. These are morality issues that should be taught by a parent. However, I can’t help but believe that when a child commits a brutal crime that it is innate, with the parents suffering as well.
— Lynette Campbellsville, Kentucky
Answer: We’d all probably agree that parents have some considerable responsibility for inculcating a sense of morality in their kids. But because I have never been a mother, I tend to resort to my memory of having been a child to sort this stuff out. (In fact, I’m often flummoxed why people who make sweeping assertions about children don’t seem to reach back and remember what it was like to be one. So many adults seem to discuss kids as if they’re zoo animals, or a species from another planet that we have to study and examine, to poke and prod to see what they’re made of, like abductees on The X-Files. You’d never know that every single adult without exception used to BE a kid, and so should know something about human childhood from the inside.) Sure, my parents tried to teach me right from wrong. But in my experience, they were not impressing themselves upon a blank slate. I recall having a fairly deep-seated moral compass without any help, and I don’t think that made me exceptional, either; I wasn’t morally precocious. Nor was I any little angel, either. But whenever I lied, or shoplifted a candy bar, I knew I was doing something wrong. While my parents’ guidance certainly reinforced this icky feeling that accompanied lying or stealing, their instruction seemed to connect up with a gut instinct that was already there. In fact, I have one sharp memory from about 10, when my younger brother and I tormented a couple of younger girls a few streets away, calling them names and sneering at them and generally terrorizing them so that they ran away and cowered and cried. We only did that twice, and never did anything remotely like it again. The experience —I suppose of “bullying” — provided a particular kind of pleasure, and sense of power, that I recognized right away was evil, even if I probably didn’t reach for that specific word in my head. I’ve never forgotten that sensation. And my parents never knew about our nasty little game, and didn’t have to tell me what that feeling was. If I may go out on a limb here, it was as if recognition of the nature of wickedness was written into my genetic code.
Question: I think parents who know their child has a problem is responsible if they do not get all the help for them they can. But I also think that the medical people and the government is also responsible … how can you blame parents who try to help but can’t get any help until their child does hurt or kill someone?
— LoriRome,Georgia
Answer: I wouldn’t want to get sappy about how great it was in the “olden days,” but I do think that it was easier to raise kids when you could depend on your extended family, whereas now grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins are as likely as not to be spread from coast to coast. And Americans move so frequently (I think the average in this country is every four years) that we don’t have the same kind of steady relationships with our neighbors, who help to keep track of our kids, whose kids have friendships with our kids, etc. But I don’t believe government programs, medical or psychiatric intervention, or the institutional assistance of educators can fill in for this more personal void. We also tend to give two-career households a hard time. But when both parents work, it’s often from economic necessity, not because they don’t care about their kids or are just out for their own satisfaction. For the same reason — money — all parents can’t afford to avail themselves of lavish psychiatric care when a child is going off the rail.
