Krishna
Starts with a letter by a woman called Eva to Franklin who seems to have separated from her. She talks about meeting Mary Woodford in a supermarket. A plumpier version of Mary. . She seems to have taken the letter writer to court in a lawsuit in the past. You begin to get outlines of the story that seems to start in the middle of a life lived. The narration is fascinating. You already feel drawn into the story by the second page, which is a hallmark of a skillful author. But wait, I have complaints about the thread of the story – not about the narration – later on.
Sounds like Kevin was involved in something big and is in jail. Now, the strongest point of the book is not the plot, nor the story itself but the language used in each page that jumps out at you and pleases you. Reminds me of The Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels that I read long ago.
Very fiercely independent (and intellectual) people, the narrator and Franklin plan for a kid – meticulously, as if in a school project. They see another family, Brian’s with two daughters. It is debatable if they thought that family as the ideal to aspire to. The lady thinks not and thinks that Franklin says so only because it is ‘ideal’ and not exactly because it is what he aspires to.
The story moves slowly where Eva suggests that they have a kid after many years together but the language just flows, exquisite, surprising, enticing you to read on.
But even that language cannot hide the tepid storytelling. They have the baby, Kevin. There is a rife because Franklin expects Eva to care for him and Kevin is actually evil! He refuses her milk and is totally cantankerous, exhausting her, but angelic when Franklin is around. It is almost as if he is planning and Franklin cannot understand why Eva is complaining. (Not to mention that she has to stay home despite her business interests while he spends more and more time outside, away from all the rancour).
Kevin talks to her but not to Franklin. He seems to be evil incarnate and drives away the baby’a nanny.
Franklin is always sceptical about her claims that Kevin is evil. Even after she leaves for a trip to Africa for her work and is back, he remains skeptical, even after Kevin raises hell in a restaurant, embarrassing them all. He always says ‘This is a phase he will grow out of’ for everything, infuriating Eva further.
The story is told in a series of letters. Usually I do not like stories in the form of letters – one sided at best – I do understand that it is a storytelling technique and due to my preferences, I may miss out on many good books but call it my blindspot if you will. For all that, the story is a very simple and slow moving one. Also the depiction of Kevin almost from birth as a kind of antichrist bent on tormenting his (admittedly impatient) mother is a rich one and stretches my credulity. At a practical level you also wonder ‘Why are you telling Franklin everything that he too lived through? Why are you writing letters almost every day after the fights you describe and the separation? What makes you tick?’ but of source there is no answer.
The story at times weighs you down so that you mutter ‘Oh, for God’s sake, move the plot forward!’ even as you enjoy the narration.
Not to mention irritating. Eva lets Kevin see very violent movies when he is a kid (of fourteen…still…). Justification? He will encounter violence anyway. She buys him a freaky mask with a raging face. Justification? ‘I don’t know what I was thinking at the time I bought it in Kenya’. You feel irritated, as the story is mainly told from Eva’s viewpoint – in letters to Franklin who is now separated! The squirt gun episode tells us that Franklin was just as bad or just as evil as Kevin. Eva, who writes to Franklin about what he himself did (oh boy!) does not seem to draw this simple conclusion. When Kevin tries to climb up to grab back his water rifle, and gets reprimanded by an angry Eva, Franklin takes his side and not hers. She feels humiliated.
It also dawns on us that Franklin was the wrong partner for Eva once Kevin is born. He indulges the kid with no thought of consequences even when the kid disobeys Eva openly.
Kevin waits until she has spent months to create her own workroom in the new house and trashes it in revenge of losing his water rifle.
Also, I do not understand why she is upset when Kevin, in jail, mocks Franklin brutally. If the author is trying to tell of Eva’s pathetic, even subservient dependency on Franklin, I should say that she succeeds brilliantly. If not, then I do not understand. Franklin was the main cause of indulgence in Kevin’s wayward behaviour even when it was hurting all others. s
The story goes through a daily Kevin provocation and Eva struggling to not just cope but also make even Franklin understand. Once when she loses control, she inadvertently causes broken bones in Kevin. He lies for her but only to establish control over her.
Yes, the story is told well but God, it just does not move forward. A bit like watching, poetically, paint dry!
Finally Eva gets pregnant without the knowledge of Franklin and gives birth to a girl, whom she names Celia.
Celia is a happy go lucky girl and Franklin does not feel close to her as he doted on Kevin. Celia was pretty but also dependent and full of fears.
Eva is not the benign, kindly, mother of storybooks. Her views on several things – for example a girl in the old fashioned dress who goes into the prom dance first – such preconceived notion.
This is when you realize that for all the great language used in the book, perhaps the story just is static. Broken down, every 50 pages has one incident. Her wanting a child; having a second one; Franklin being partial to Kevin; and so on.
When Kevin is brought home with Lenny, a friend, for throwing bricks on passing cars underneath from an overpass, Franklin shouts at him and then apologizes to him for being angry, after Kevin explains that it was all Lenny’s idea.
It’s meant to irritate but still…. When Celia loses her eye because she put a drain cleaner (Liquid Plumbr) in her eye with no one but Kevin in the house and with Eva working, Franklin accuses Eva of keeping it where Celia could reach it. He seems to blindly believe everything Kevin tells him, no matter how outrageous it is. And gets angry at her for even daring to suggest that Kevin could have been the cause. (Again, why is she writing all this to him? You keep worndering!)
She sees a floppy disk (remember those?) in Kevin’s room and tries it on to spy on him and finds that her computer is trashed. Not expert enough to recover, she gives it to her IT department at work and they say that her hard disk is toast and she may as well get another new one for her computer.
Kevin calmly explains that he collects viruses as they fascinate him and he knows ‘how to handle them carefully’. He has collected twenty three of them.
Then, Kevin buries a teacher’s career. There is an enquiry and Kevin says that she behaved with him sexually inappropriately. In the discussions in the house, Kevin asked her mother to stay away and talked just to his father, Franklin, who seemed to have bought his story totally, lock stock and barrel and is angry with the teacher and has demanded the enquiry.
And while we are at it, yes, Kevin is the veritable Antichrist as Eva describes her own son (He relishes masterbating openly in her sightline when he is fourteen) the entire family and even the people he targets behave very stupidly. The teacher admits to conversations (partly constructed by Kevin to scaffold the false accusation) which to us may seem inappropriate.
Eva allows him to see very violent movies and she seems to be totally angry with everything. America and Americans to start with; SUVs and a very patronising attitude throughout on things that she does not approve of. It is extremely hard to make you angry at the very narrator from whose point the entire story is written! Eva succeeds admirably. But I do not want to oversell the dismal angle. Some portions of the book are interesting, like the interview Kevin gives from jail after the event and how delusional Franklin has been. And the language, as I said, is exquisite throughout.
But even I have to admit that the ending is spectacular. How Kevin planned and executed the whole thing, how he managed to corral all the students he hated at the time he needed. How he planned it so that they were like shooting fish in the bowl and most importantly, how Eva found out. And even more terrifying is what happened to Celia that day. And how Eva found that out.
Also why Franklin was not answering his phone on the most important crisis in Eva’s life and what happened to Franklin. And even why Eva was writing to Franklin about everything that happened for which he had a part in. There is indeed a clue when Eva writes ‘I did not realize that you were taking Celia with you’ but still it is a great twist when that happens.
This elevates the story to another level and makes up a lot of ground for the slow burning paint drying pace. It still does not make up for the anti christ evil nature of Kevin, that still nags, but then you get the story only when we are about to finish the entire thing.
With the ending, this book is elevated to several levels above the ‘boring crap’ that I thought it was. It all ties together in the end too.
You leave with the satisfaction of having read a good book, a story that will stay with you. However, it is unfortunate that you cannot just read the best part. You need the whole story to understand everything. And the whole story is a bit flabby.
However, there is the language throughout – exquisite, and it pays off in spades at the end.
A nice book and will stay with you for a long time, for sure!
- 7/10 because of my lament about slowness.
— Krishna