This is an
amazing book! You don't stop thinking about it for days. It's a great book club book for everyone.
Here's a summary of
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver from Publishers Weekly on Amazon:
A number of fictional attempts have been made to portray what might lead a teenager to kill a number of schoolmates or teachers, Columbine style, but Shriver's is the most triumphantly accomplished by far. A gifted journalist as well as the author of seven novels, she brings to her story a keen understanding of the intricacies of marital and parental relationships as well as a narrative pace that is both compelling and thoughtful.
Eva Khatchadourian is a smart, skeptical New Yorker whose impulsive marriage to Franklin, a much more conventional person, bears fruit, to her surprise and confessed disquiet, in baby Kevin. From the start Eva is ambivalent about him, never sure if she really wanted a child, and he is balefully hostile toward her; only good-old-boy Franklin, hoping for the best, manages to overlook his son's faults as he grows older, a largely silent, cynical, often malevolent child. The later birth of a sister who is his opposite in every way, deeply affectionate and fragile, does nothing to help, and Eva always suspects his role in an accident that befalls little Celia.
The narrative, which leads with quickening and horrifying inevitability to the moment when Kevin massacres seven of his schoolmates and a teacher at his upstate New York high school, is told as a series of letters from Eva to an apparently estranged Franklin, after Kevin has been put in a prison for juvenile offenders. This seems a gimmicky way to tell the story, but is in fact surprisingly effective in its picture of an affectionate couple who are poles apart, and enables Shriver to pull off a huge and crushing shock far into her tale.
It's a harrowing, psychologically astute, sometimes even darkly humorous novel, with a clear-eyed, hard-won ending and a tough-minded sense of the difficult, often painful human enterprise.Originally LOLAs was going to review this book in January 2008 and so I read it in December. But after a few of us read it, we decided it was not the best holiday read so we pushed the discussion back to our April group.
Since this was before I started blogging, I don't have many comments. But here is what Julie said in her book journal - "Wow - this is quite a novel. I thought it was so well written, but I just couldn't quite give it five stars. I just couldn't bring myself to love this book because it was so gruesome. But well worth the read."
As she said, it's not a light read. But I think it's a
must read for all book clubs.
Published:
Pages: 416
Series: None
Author's Website:
Harper CollinsDiscussion Questions:
Reading Group Guide
When I read Susan's, of West of Mars, review of The Kommandant's Girl by Pam Jenoff, I just knew my book club needs to read this. And so does yours! Be sure to read what Susan has to say about it here. 
The review by Melissa at 5 Minutes for Books is quite intriguing. She didn't say it would be a good book club book but I can envision it being a very interesting discussion.
Interesting non-fiction. We all have friends. We all have folks who we think of friends that are really not our friends - they drag us down and keep us from being the best we can be. These folks are frenemies. 
Montana 1948 sounds like an interesting book based on the review by Trish at Hey Lady Whatcha' Reading? Click on this link to read her review. Then click on this link to read a review from Jessica - another member of the same book club!
The description of this book, Wife in the North by Judith O'Reilly, reminds me of Fifty Acres and a Poodle by Jeanne Marie Laskas which LOLAs read a number of years ago and just loved. There were so many things to discuss about the author's life and choices. And lots of discussion about what we would choose in similar circumstances. And the laughing! (We also read the sequel - The Exact Same Moon: Fifty Acres and a family and enjoyed it just as much!)
This is an amazing book! You don't stop thinking about it for days. It's a great book club book for everyone. 
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