Eva, a woman from New York with Armenian roots, writes letters to her ex-husband Franklin, about their love life, about how they grow apart from each other, and most of all about their son Kevin who murdered nine people in his school on a Thursday afternoon. She tries to reconstruct where everything went wrong. Is it her fault, is she a bad mother? Could it even be avoided?A book that rips your soul apart. That forces you to stop for a while and take a look at ourself. As Eva is telling us her side of the story, including every tiny and seemingly irrelevant detail of her pregnancy, Kevin's birth, her fights with her husband, it is impossible not to start judging her behaviour. Was she really a bad mother? How would we react in her situation? Does she try to influence us by giving only her side of the story? Does she or does she not love her son? Should she even love him? What could have saved her son from destruction? It is quite possible the answer to that last question is the only sentence which was never spoken out loud in their marriage, "we need to talk about Kevin".If I am obliged to point out a downside: the dialogues are not seldom unrealistic. That could be the product of a poor translation, I'm not sure. Also, a large part of Kevin's childhood, roughly from age 6 to 14, feels 'skipped', even though it could be highly relevant for the development of his character. But still a must read, definitely if you enjoy being emotionally jolted.
