We Need to Talk About Kevin New edition

Two years ago, Eva Khatchadourian's son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker, and a popular algebra teacher. Because he was only 15 at the time of the killings, he received a lenient sentence and is now in a prison for young offenders in upstate New York.

Two years ago, Eva Khatchadourian's son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker, and a popular algebra teacher. Because he was only fifteen at the time of the killings, he received a lenient sentence and is now in a prison for young offenders in upstate New York. Telling the story of Kevin's upbringing, Eva addresses herself to her estranged husband through a series of letters. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about both motherhood in general and Kevin in particular. How much is her fault? Lionel Shriver tells a compelling, absorbing, and resonant story while framing these horrifying tableaux of teenage carnage as metaphors for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.

"'As a mother of two, reading Lionel Shriver's novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin was a comfort and a revelation, I'm not the only one who agonised over what the impact of having a child would be, felt invaded by pregnancy and was terrified at the awesome responsibility of becoming a mother and being held responsible for whatever adult I turn out. It's a profoundly important novel with universal appeal. It's beautifully written and a sometimes shocking, but always gripping read.' Jenni Murray; 'A thoughtful and deeply disquieting novel... beautifully conceived' The Onion"

Lionel Shriver is the author of seven novels, and has written extensively for the Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Economist. She lives in London and New York.

Winner of Orange Prize 2005. Runner-up for Reading Group Book of the Year 2007. Shortlisted for British Book Awards: Crime Thriller of the Year 2006.