We Need To Talk About Kevin - By Lionel Shriver

The BBC Meeting Mon 28 May was brilliantly hosted by our newest member Ewan, so a big thanks to Ewan for this sterling effort and for the knockout views.

Here are the scores for the We Need to Talk About Kevin:

Scott 9
Ewan 3
Andrew 9.5
Raj 7.5
Leanne 8
Dennis 4
Pauline 7
Mark 7
Kevin 9
Helen 9

Average 7.3

Clearly We Need to Talk About Kevin was a winner (although with a striking variance in scores) so thanks Scotty for that choice.

Of great interest, and mixed views, to BBC members were the nature vs nurture argument on human development. Our guest Pauline, who unlike most of us, is a parent, waivered strongly towards the nurture side, an interesting perspective for us ghetto dwellers. As is often the case on this issue there was great variance generally on the nature vs nurture issue on human nature generally.

A Synopsis from Wikipedia

“We Need to Talk About Kevin is a 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver, concerning a fictional school massacre. It is written from the perspective of the killer's mother, Eva Khatchadourian, and documents her attempt to come to terms with her son Kevin and the murders he committed. Although told in the first person as a series of letters from Eva to her husband, the novel's structure also strongly resembles that of a thriller. The novel, Shriver's seventh, won the 2005 Orange Prize, a UK-based prize for female authors of any nationality (although Shriver is American).

Shriver deliberately avoids arguments about media violence and gun control, to enable her to focus on the relative importance of innate characteristics and personal experiences in determining character and behaviour. (Kevin does not, in fact, use a gun to commit the killings.) The book is particularly concerned with the possibility that Eva's ambivalence toward maternity may have influenced Kevin's development.”