CREDIT: CANDIS BROSS
Where many novels seek to illuminate, We Need to Talk About Kevin illustrates an unfathomable darkness.

Some questions are unanswerable; some events lack the cause we are trained to expect; some darkness goes so deep that no amount of light relieves it.

This is what lies within the pages of We Need to Talk About Kevin, a heart-wrenching novel by Lionel Shriver, the unanswered darkness behind an unspeakable tragedy.

Written in a series of letters to her estranged husband, the novel tells the story of Eva Khatchadourian. As the pages turn, seemingly of their own volition, we delve deeper and deeper into the tale of the mother and her son Kevin, the perpetrator of a high school massacre.

The fact that this sad phenomenon continues, with more shootings being reported on a depressingly regular basis, makes the novel all the more realistic. The lack of reason or of an easy blame marks the pointless and tragic waste of these reports.

Perhaps one of the most important points made in We Need to Talk About Kevin is the idea that the sensationalization of these crimes in the media is extremely problematic. Our current cultural trend of worshiping celebrities and our failure to consider why individuals are famous has done nothing but encourage this type of tragedy.

Kevin is far from alone in willing to kill for his 15 minutes in the spotlight.

Eva, however, instead spends a large portion of her time remembering the victims. Their names, their faces, burned into her memory. These are the names we should know, and only now, more than 15 years since these shootings became a nightmarish trend, is the media finally starting to change the way it talks about these crimes.

This is a novel that is hard to put down in many ways. Eva’s journey of self-discovery, her exploration into the past, pursued with the diligence she once put into exploring the world, is beyond compelling. The hints at future events, unspeakable in the moment, make pausing impossible even as a building sense of dread accompanies each turn of the page. Kevin, a study in sociopathy, breaks your heart with brief glimpses into what could have been.

A quick warning, however, though, for those who want children, this is a book that will make you think long and hard about the worst possible scenarios. There’s no letting up, no simple solution, no person that can be blamed, no vision of the perfect parent that could have prevented all of this.

Instead, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a raw, almost cruel, detailing of human fallibility. It encourages us to examine ourselves, to consider our own actions in similar circumstances and to forgive the completely unforgivable.

This is a novel with many lessons, a novel that defies a single interpretation. While the temptation to point fingers and place blame is there, to read only the surface would deny the terrible beauty of what Shriver has created. Instead of a simple story, Shriver has created a portrait of our deepest fears.