Lionel Shriver (We Need To Talk About Kevin) on Victoria Tech massacre

Ironically enough, shortly after finishing Shriver`s novel "We Need To Talk About Kevin", its story emboddied itself once again in the brutal reality of Victoria Tech massacre. Writer`s comments on the tragedy were published by "The Guardian":

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'These are all copycat crimes'In the wake of the massacre at Virginia Tech, familiar questions are being asked: why does this keep happening? And why does it happen so often in America? Lionel Shriver offers some answers Wednesday April 18, 2007

The campus shooting phenomenon in the US would have lost much of its power to shock by now if it weren't for the fact that the perpetrators keep ingeniously introducing new twists. Last October, it was an Amish school, of all places; in 2005 it was a school on a Native American reservation. On what was almost exactly the eighth anniversary of Columbine - hitherto a one-word thumbnail for this whole family of atrocities - the 32-body-count shooting at Virginia Tech has an uncomfortably competitive flavour. The man who killed himself all too late in the day in Blacksburg, Virginia, claimed more than twice as many victims as Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris did at Columbine high school in 1999. Though "Virginia Tech" doesn't have the same ring as the punchier "Columbine", you wonder if this new shooter wasn't making a bid to update the cultural lexicon - to coin the new byword for random campus violence.
While the killers continue to improvise, the media aftermath is numbingly ritualistic. We ask: why do these rampages keep happening, why primarily in the United States, and what is to be done? The answers vary, but they are universally unsatisfactory.
Why do they happen? If it does not sound too tautological, campus shootings keep happening because they keep happening. Every time one of these stories breaks, every time the pictures flash round the world, it increases the chances that another massacre will follow. In the main, all of these events are copycat crimes. Campus shootings are now a genre, much as, in literature, campus-shooting novels are a genre, one of whose entries I am guilty of writing myself. They are part of the cultural vocabulary, and any disgruntled, despairing or vengeful character - of any age of late, since grown-ups now want in on the act - now has the idea of shooting up a campus firmly lodged in his brain.
I do not believe that the choice of schools or colleges for the pursuit of grievance or, often, for the staging of what I call "extroverted suicide", is arbitrary. For most of us, school and university are the seats of profound and formative emotional experiences, and the psychological power of these locales does not necessarily abate with age. Only last month I had reason to walk down the hallway of an elementary school in the US, and the lockers, lino and acrid chalk-dust smell sent my head spinning with memories, not all of which were pleasant. I felt claustrophobic, smothered, actively grateful to be spared the tyrannies of Mrs Townsend's home room, and relieved to get out. In fact, I couldn't believe I was allowed out of the door without a pass.
For a lucky few, school and college are where we first distinguish ourselves. But for the majority, they are the site of first humiliation, subjugation and injury. They are almost always our first introduction to brutal social hierarchies, as they may also sponsor our first romantic devastation. What better stage on which to act out primitive retribution?
As for why America in particular sponsors these killings ... as I write, relatively little has been made public about the shooter in Virginia, but that won't be the case for long, which is probably as he would have wanted it. Anonymity is the last thing most of his fellow campus shooters have sought.
Time was that appearing in the newspaper for doing something dreadful was a fearful prospect. But Americans appear to have lost touch with the concept of shame. Now that my compatriots have eschewed the old distinction between fame and infamy for the all-embracing concept of "celebrity", all that counts is being noticed. Even posthumous attention beats being ignored.
I would far prefer that this new killer remained anonymous. Were all such culprits to remain utterly and eternally unknown, the chips on their shoulders interred with their bones, their grudges for ever private, surely the frequency of these grotesquely gratuitous sprees would plummet. One of the driving forces for most of these killers is not just to be noticed, but, however perversely, to be understood.
But you can't outlaw being disaffected or artificially force a culture to re-embrace the concept of shame. Nor do we want educational institutions to engender the paranoid, dread-steeped ethos of modern airports. Surely the only effective preventative measure is logistical. Make it harder to get guns.
How many mass killings does the American public have to witness before its government gets serious about gun control? While the source of armaments in Monday's shooting has yet to be disclosed as I write, Virginia has some of the most lax gun laws in the country. You can buy "only" one handgun per month, and criminal-background checks are not required to buy weapons at gun shows.
Nevertheless, American versions of strict gun control are so farcical that many campus shooters would still have had no problem acquiring weapons while playing by the most stringent of rules likely to be applied. Who is to say that campus shooters of the future won't be perfectly content to bide their time as a required "waiting period" between purchase and acquisition ticks by?
For America's federal government to take gun control seriously, nothing less than mass armed insurrection is required. Were the public ever to act on the principles of their own Declaration of Independence, for example - "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive ... it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government" - Congress would shut down the gun industry in a heartbeat.

· Lionel Shriver is the author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, a novel about an American school shooting. Her new novel The Post-Birthday World will be published by HarperCollins in May.
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We Need To Talk About Kevin

Very disturbing book,which gives a lot of food for thought. From time to time I was thinking if writing such a book as a fiction was moral at all. The writer walks deeply into the dark side of parenting. She confronts the socially accepted notions of motherhood and leads us into the nightmare of depression and troubled parenting.The novel unfolds in the form of daily letters written by Kevin`s mother to her husband. Many may find the style overloaded with too many words and expressions.At some points I had the feeling that Eva was repeating herself.Well,this was not contributing to the good literary style but made the letters seem more genuine as I can imagine a person in her place repeating over and over the painful moments she wants to share and being not very precise.

This story places the great question about evil, and doesn`t answer it: is the evil natural/inborn, or caused by the family and upbringing? Eva tends to picture her son as strange and weird from the day of his birth. This may be her perception as well,as she is uncapable of connecting to him. The baby seems alien to her,and the strangeness she feels,reflects in his behaviour as in a mirror. Kevin seems to have picked up her deficiency of mother feelings from the start,and he explores and puts her on trial until the very end of the book. From one side,it is clear,that Eva is not capable of improving their relationship but he also turns to be a quite difficult baby. In the best seeling and wonderful book "Families and How To Survive Them" by Skinner and Cleese,the authors speak about the other side of mother-child relationship which often stays in the shadow- the responce of the baby itself. In general,babies tend to be a lovable creatures-it is in their nature to make parents love them and care for them. Babies have a natural tendency to evoke compassion and attention to their needs.They also are capable of giving an emotional "gratification" which is important for the parents as it is their "compensation" for the hard work in the first months.However,a small percent of the babies seem to have difficulties with bonding.They are more shut in themselves and emotionally reserved.When a mother has problems connecting to the baby, such a baby may make the things even more difficult for her.I think that`s the case with Kevin.

It was very sad observing how Eva`s marriage deteriorated after the birth of Kevin. It seemed like her husband,Franklin,fell into the predefined family model and could not relate to Eva`s feelings.It was painful to read how many times she tried to tell him about her problems but every time he would just avoid the subject,or find it her fault,or suggest that she is simply "a bit tired". Of course,I was angry with him all the time,including his blindness to Kevin`s strange and weird behaviour.

Although as a person who has suffered from postnatal depression,I could relate to Eva in many aspects,still I couldn`t relate emotionally to her.There was a lot of hate and coldness in her. I think she actually doesn`t stop hating Kevin through the whole book.

The main question,of course, was why Kevin did what he did. Why did he grow so alienated,so cold,so weird? Did he enjoy hurting the others? Little doubt.Did he love her mother? I think,yes. Perhaps he was a hypersensitive child and he choose this kind of behaviour as a responce to her hatred. He seems quite alert at not allowing her any sense of gratification as a parent.He played very skilfully with her sense of guilt. He struggled for her attention by turning off all attention from him. Although he plays as self-confident and untouched,in fact he is terribly unsecure. He felt himself as being of no importance at home while paradoxically,at the same time,he was the constant center of attention.

Why he did it? I think part of him wanted really to enter the news,to make something significant,to turn the attention to himself. This was also a way to make her mother hurt a lot and to disrupt her social position.It is worth noting that Kevin hates her mother`s job and social status probably because hs feels that he is viewed as a hindrance in her career,and also because her job robs him of her attention and presence.So he should have really enjoyed seeing her humiliated.

The second thing is that in my view,Kevin was a terribly spoiled child. It is not a paradox. Eva tries all the time to make up for her lack of love. Franklin plays the good father and secretly competes with her wife,eager to show her how much she fails in being a good parent.This is a very dangerous game,because it fails to install any respect in Kevin and fails to build in him moral boundaries.With a mother who hates you,and a father who stupidly overlooks all your mischievings,how it would be possible to grow as a responsible person?

But inspite of the grave mistakes of his parents,I still think that they cannot be totally responsible for his brutal act. He choose to act like this,and most of his behaviour was a personal choice.I know that many would argue and doubt if a child can make personal choices when he/she is totally dependant on his/her upbringing,but in my view there is still a room open for personal choice. Kevin choose how to respond to his mother.
The transformation at the very end of the book seemed as a less probable outcome and also hard to believe. But when Eva says that she finally loves her child,it may as well be true as he is the only one left for her to love.She feels bound to him by his terrible childhood and loving him is like a sentence she deserves.

I may say I don`t regret reading this book.I am not sure that I am going to search for another one by the same writer but it was an interesting read and made me think over the moral dilemmas.