Dawtrey, Adam (April 22, 2010). "The welcome return of Lynne Ramsay". guardian.co.uk (Guardian News & Media) . Retrieved April 22, 2010. Lionel Shriver (born Margaret Ann Shriver; May 18, 1957) is an American author and journalist who lives in the United Kingdom. Her novel We Need to Talk About Kevin won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005. McCauley, Stephen (May 21, 2018). "Review: Property – Stories Between Two Novellas". Sunday Book Review. The New York Times . Retrieved October 29, 2018 So was Kevin born that way or was he made that way because he didn't have a mother that wanted, loved or nurtured him?

Maybe it's because I'm not a mother and I did find it believable that Eva doesn't love her son completely. I noted that some aspects of this parental passion play have been “heartening”. At 93, my father is still fundamentally himself. He has accommodated the steady shrinking of his life – no more New York Philharmonic or Metropolitan Opera – with resigned grace. Pre-pandemic, he resisted a mobility scooter at first, but rapidly reconciled to the perceived demotion, zooming the Upper West Side with gusto. These days, he accedes to his faithful carer’s necessary involvement in his intimate bodily functions without a fuss, for he’s not hung up on younger people’s strangely bathroomy version of what constitutes “dignity”. My father still has dignity, or the kind that counts. He remains in the grip of an astonishing life force. He’s proud of his accomplishments and won’t let anyone forget them. Despite the imposed compromises of advanced age – compromises that, in my naivety, I imagine would be unacceptable to me – my father clings ferociously to survival. Glimpsing this future, his younger incarnation would be sobered, but lifelong self-regard would preclude his ever vowing that he’d rather be dead. Above a certain subjective threshold of torment, life is not worth living. It fails a primitive cost-benefit analysis The risks only start with possible physical abnormality. Personality is far more of an issue. And ultimately one has to consider the amount of pain being introduced into the world, not just for oneself and the child in question, but also for all those who might be harmed overtly or not, intentionally or not, by this new life form.Portes, Jonathan (September 1, 2021). "An obsession with migration figures is about more than just numbers". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved September 17, 2021. Que sí, que sí, que esto es un completo librazo y obviamente ya está encabezando el año como la mejor lectura. Some books stay with us forever! After reading them we cannot stop thinking about them. We keep contemplating each chapter on our minds and thinking of different scenarios about what we would do if we were in the characters’ shoes! We need to talk about Kevin is a cautionary tale about motherhood and should be read before one decides to take the big step. If you have a child and you don’t want to, he/she might become a mass murderer so better mind your own business and stay childless. I am joking but the novel doesn’t. Shriver's book So Much for That was published on March 2, 2010. [12] In the novel, Shriver presents a biting criticism of the U.S. health care system. It was named as a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction. [13] Her work The New Republic was published in 2012. It was written in 1998, but failed to find a publisher at the time. [14]

Barber, Lynn (April 14, 2013). "In the shadow of my big brother". The Sunday Times . Retrieved October 13, 2021. But I didn't enjoy it. It's not a book to savor. Even the prose is overwrought, perfectly capturing Eva's hapless condescension and sense of superiority brimming over in her letters to husband Franklin, as much a part of her character as Kevin's sociopathic tendencies. We Need to Talk About Kevin depicted a mother coming to terms with her son, who has gone on a murder spree at his school. It was rejected by 30 publishers in the UK before it found a home. It was her “make or break novel” and was adapted into the acclaimed 2011 film starring Tilda Swinton. But Shriver didn’t feel the film was as easy to follow as her book. “I was frustrated that it wasn’t made in a more accessible way. I just had a problem figuring out what was going on.” This book was beautifully written, insightful, questioning and heartbreaking. It was nothing at all like I expected, and even guessing the things that I guessed (which turned out to be true), it didn't make the impact any less. This book was so incredible at making me sympathize and empathize with each person's perspective, though we only see these through Eva's brutally honest memory, that it was impossible for me to lay blame anywhere, even though the potential for assigning blame was huge. When diagnosed with low-tension glaucoma in the 1990s, she was warned that, if she lived long enough, she’d go blind. She’s lived long enough. As of last year, this formerly voracious reader can’t discern a carry-out menu, nor can she lay eyes on her beloved husband. A television is a radio with lots of dead airtime. Mostly, she sits in her wheelchair, chin on chest. I’ve no idea what goes on in her head.

Ma Shriver non fa sconti: se Eva sia o meno la madre nella quale identificarsi e specchiarsi conta relativamente, perché Eva è la madre di tutte le madri.

Da questo libro, una bravissima regista inglese, Lynne Ramsey ha tratto un film: ha impiegato anni a scrivere la sceneggiatura, l’ha modificata secondo le esigenze del budget, e alla fine ha realizzato un film dallo stesso titolo, che è semplicemente magnifico, stupendo, devastante, come e oltre il libro. Un adattamento superbo, che conserva intatta tutta l’anima del libro, rimedia alle sbavature del romanzo, e crea un’opera a se stante, che io avvicino ai capolavori. Dove i fatti mostrati sono reali, o forse immaginari, sempre difficile capirlo, perché siamo dentro la testa di Eva. Tilda Swinton è perfetta nella parte di Eva – e Kevin è indimenticabile. Eva's retrospective self-analysis, through a lens tinged by tragedy, guilt and shame, gives us a perspective into events and motivations both in hindsight and as they unfold, retaining the immediacy and intensity that only a first-person account can provide. It happened but it is never past, because the telling makes it happen in perpetuity, which is exactly how trauma works. The book was told in a series of letters by Kevin's mom, Eva to her husband, Franklin. Most of the letters Eva talks about Kevin, why she decided to have him, what it was like raising him, ways that she might of failed at being a mother, and confessions of her own about Kevin. As the story unfolds, we get a picture of Eva and Franklin. She, spirited, independent, liberal, proud of her Armenian heritage and a little contemptuous of her adoptive country: he, more conventional and boringly American. Eva as the propreitor of the highly successful travel guidebook franchise A Wing and A Prayer never wanted a child. But she succumbs to Franklin's entreaties and conceives Kevin. And from the moment he sets foot on earth, Eva's life becomes a horror story.a b c d e Levy, Ariel (May 25, 2020). "Lionel Shriver Is Looking for Trouble". The New Yorker . Retrieved June 28, 2020. Shriver expressed her opposition to woke and identity politics in a 2021 interview with The Evening Standard, stating that "I don't like discrimination of any kind" but adding "there is nothing malign, initially at least, in the impulse to pursue a fairer society. The biggest problem with the 'woke’ is their methods - too often involving name calling, silencing, vengefulness, and predation." [39] Barnett, David (June 12, 2018), "Lionel Shriver dropped from prize judges over diversity comments", The Guardian.

a b "Lionel Shriver's full speech: 'I hope the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad' ". The Guardian. September 13, 2016 . Retrieved September 29, 2016. In 2009, she donated the short story "Long Time, No See" to Oxfam's " Ox-Tales" project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the Fire collection. [11] Chi sono io lettore, sono Eva o sono Kevin? Posso restare a guardare o devo prendere parte, e schierarmi? Arendt, Paul (June 6, 2006). "Ramsay needs to shoot a film about Kevin". The Guardian. Guardian News & Media. p.21 ( G2 supplement). This question, which I think is at the heart of the book, is not as clearly answered as I'm making it out to me. In fact, Lionel Shriver, in writing about readers' responses to this work, says she has seen two camps:Shriver, Lionel (September 13, 2016). "Lionel Shriver's full speech: 'I hope the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad' ". The Guardian . Retrieved September 15, 2016. Orange Prize citation". Women's Prize for Fiction. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Shriver is a Democrat. [27] She is a patron of UK population growth rate concern group Population Matters, [28] and supported the UK's exit from the European Union. [3] A sidenote on the writing -- I dislike having to work so hard to read a book. I have trouble believing that an ordinary reader made it through this novel without a dictionary in hand. What's with the convoluted sentence structure and made-up words, and why did the author insist on using phrases such as "lambent joy," ""immediate rapacities," and "alien argot?" And this, from a woman who supposedly wrote travel guides aimed at the average college student? I think not. She voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. [27] In September 2022, Shriver released an open letter in which she endorsed Republican Ron DeSantis for the 2024 U.S. Presidential election. In the letter, she criticized both Biden and Donald Trump as poor leaders, and praised DeSantis for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, banning critical race theory in schools, opposing transgender women from competing in women's sports, and passing the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act; while noting that she disagrees with him on abortion. [27]