We Need to Talk About Kevin

Lionel Shriver

At various times over the years, I have mentioned the fifty-page rule. That rule is that you give a book fifty pages to get better. If it's still horrible after fifty pages, throw it against the wall, let it slide behind the couch to feed the dustbunnies (cf. last week's review of Museum), and start something else. I used to be the kind of person who would never let a book go until I'd strangled on every last word, so starting to use the fifty-page rule for truly bad novels seven or eight years ago was profoundly liberating. And, really, no matter how bad a book has been, and I've come across some stinkers (cf. last week's review of Museum), I've always held to that rule. If I give a book zero stars, with a few exceptions that truly transcend badness that I actually did finish (cf. review from a while ago of the worst book ever written, Sue Doro's Heart, Home, and Hard Hats), you can rest assured I've choked down fifty pages of it. Until now.

Lionel Shriver's writing style (or her main character; the difference, for the purposes of this discussion, is nil) in We Need to Talk About Kevin is so self-obsessed, self-pitying, whining, sickening, and all-around loathsome I could not, under any circumstances, make myself continue after page twenty-four. Were it not a library book, I'd have burned it rather than feed the dustbunnies this possibly lethal dreck. Now, granted, having only made it to page twenty-four, I will admit that it's entirely possible the book does get better. Two things, however, tell me this is not the case. The first is that, while sometimes books bog down in setup before they get to the plot, then take off (the most famous recent example being Neal Stephenson's wonderful Snow Crash), when the problem with a book is the author's actual writing style, I have yet to come across a case where the book gets better. The second is that other reviews of the book, at least those not written by either people who gush over it (and I have little doubt that those capable of ignoring an author's writing style in favor of the plot would get a lot out of this; I just don't understand how a reader can ignore writing style) or those who give every book a five-star review voice much the same complaint. And these are people who forced themselves all the way through, for the most part. Some choice snippets from others include "...Eva is the kind of person who... invites being taken down a peg or two...," "I just could not like the protagonist... at all," and a subject line reading "well written, but has loathsome protagonist." Indeed. Not normally a dustbunny-filling problem, except that this is an epistolary novel. The protagonist's voice is the only one you hear. Three hundred plus long, whining, self-pitying, self-obsessed, annoying pages. Do you have a friend who does nothing but whine and complain about how hard life is? Imagine getting a three-hundred-page typed single-spaced letter from said friend. Would you read it, or skim the first few pages to get the gist, then toss the rest into the trash? Now imagine the letter came from a stranger. Same question.

I suggest you apply the same treatment to We Need to Talk About Kevin.