We Need To Talk About Kevin

I'm reading this great book at the moment called We Need To Talk About Kevin. I've been courting it for quite some time, waiting for my brother to lend me his copy, flirting with it in the bookstore and eventually succumbing to a 2 for £10 offer in Virgin Megastores (also got Lunar Park).

I think it was worth the wait. I'm about six chapters in and won't pretend it's an easy read. It's hard work, like trying to run through a vat of treacle. With Haruki Murakami, even with his most twisted narrative, you feel as though you are skipping through his words or swinging gaily from the branches of his stories.

This is difficult. The language is pleasing but you have to dig deep and let it wash over you, and hopefully it will drag you along with it.

The reason I mention this book (and I've been 'told' before that nobody is interested in what others are reading - even though I am), is because I can quite identify with the main character, Eva Khatchadourian.

I'm sure most of you have either read or heard of this book so I won't go into detail but this book is special in that it avoids the whole 'Bowling for Columbine' type issues and concentrates more on a mother's view of the effect personal experiences have in determining character and behaviour. This character isn't afraid to bare her soul (in the form of letters to her ex-husband) and look inside herself at the cause.

I identify particularly with her views on pregnancy and childbirth. Ok, I'm no mother. I've never been pregnant and I have no intention of becoming so, but when she's weighing up the pros and cons of getting 'with child', her arguments against are honest and brutal.

Comparing the act of carrying a life inside with John Hurt's stomach bursting scene in Alien, is almost exactly how I see it, too. It's not a fashionable or even 'acceptable' opinion to have as a woman and Lionel Shriver has been publicly criticised even in her private life for standing up and saying she does not want children.

Why does this have to be an issue? What I like as the story unfolds, is the fact that Eva no longer has anything to lose from being completely truthful in revealing her inability to bond with her child to Franklin, her ex-husband. It's sad but also humanises her.

Maybe it's the groupie for the underdog in me, but I sympathise and identify with her on a certain level.