Lionel Shriver’s Orange Prize-winning eighth novel We Need to Talk About Kevin deals with the controversial themes of maternal ambivalence, juvenile delinquency and other difficult, generally glossed-over facets of marriage and parenthood.

The book, on the surface, seems an attempt to explore the underlying psychological complexities of a juvenile delinquent, Kevin Khatchadourian, responsible for a horrifying school massacre. The incident finds echoes with the Columbine High School shoot-out involving two high school seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who killed twelve students and a teacher. Through the course of the story, the book expands its scope to explicate on the anxieties – seemingly commonplace at first glance but of great significance, nevertheless – experienced by couples when confronted with the prospect of having a child.

Kevin’s mother Eva Khatchadourian, through a sequence of letters to her estranged husband Franklin, narrates the events leading up to that momentous day ominously referred to as Thursday when their first-born Kevin brutally murders nine people using  bow and arrows.

Shriver’s incisive writing tracks Eva’s struggle to understand the reasons behind Kevin’s violent outburst. As the narrative progresses, Eva comprehends that Kevin may not have been singularly responsible for the massacre. His entire upbringing – never lacking in any material comforts whatsoever – including Franklin and Eva too, may have played a pivotal role first in shaping Kevin’s personality and later in failing to attend to and correct his faults.

Eva is the quintessential modern woman with a high profile career. Despite being initially unwilling, she decides to have a child – through not entirely unselfish reasons. Kevin turns out to be a problem child right from the day of his birth when he refuses to be breastfed, as if a reaction to Eva’s own reluctant foray into motherhood. Eva finds Kevin relentlessly difficult to handle: he refuses to be potty-trained until six, once rampages through Eva’s study destroying all of her beloved possessions and is cunning enough to conceal his vicious side from his adoring father. Kevin gradually distances Franklin from Eva and gives rise to yet another cause for his mother’s growing resentment towards him. Or so it seems.

But Eva is not completely innocent. She is, by turns, indifferent or downright cruel in her behavior with Kevin. In one touching incident, an ailing Kevin requests Eva to read aloud the story of Robin Hood to him. This incident reveals him to be almost normal, leading to the realization that Eva is a highly unreliable narrator. She may be cleverly molding the story to show herself in a more favorable light, trying to somehow be absolved of any responsibility in Kevin’s murderous spree.

Although Shriver’s slightly awkward prose may take some getting used to, the read is, finally, very rewarding. The book foregrounds every misgiving, fear and apprehension a new parent encounters and impresses on the reader how vulnerable they are after the birth of a child. Through the character of Kevin, who seems to be Eva’s personal nightmare – ceaselessly stifling her growth and freedom – the book gives voice to a harsh and usually taboo aspect of parenthood: some parents may not necessarily love their own children.

The novel addresses the universal, never-ending debate of nature versus nurture. Was Kevin so wholly unlikeable as to merit Eva’s complete negligence? Is it possible for a person to be inherently evil? How much of people’s actions are governed by outside forces and how much by unalterable personal traits?

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a compelling and profound book. It insists we focus our attention to the urgent questions confronting the contemporary society where paradigms of parenthood, femininity and maternal love are continually shifting and portrays how people everywhere endeavour to redeem themselves in the face of pain and tragedy.

Such days, when trees run downwind,
their arms stretched before them.

Such days, when the sun’s in a drawer
and the drawer is locked.

When the meadow is dead, is a carpet
thin and shabby, with no pattern

and at bus stops people retract into collars
their faces like fists.

- And when, in a firelit room, a mother looks
at her four seasons, her little boy,

in the centre of everything, with still pools
of shadows and a fire throwing flowers.

Norman MacCaig

*

Gigha

That firewood pale with salt and burning green
Outfloats its men who waved with a sound of drowning
Their saltcut hands over mazes of this rough bay.

W.S. Graham

*

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,

“Butterflies”

“Elephants”

“Woman at the Window”

*

I’m sure Dali needs no introduction. This post is mostly for myself as he’s one of my all time favourite artists.

This is a perfunctory post to make up for the extended inactivity on the blog, one I’m afraid will ensue for at least a fortnight more. I’m currently on my study holidays, which is so laughably ironic. “Studying” is the last thing I’m upto, though over the last couple of days my guilt almost succeeded in overcoming my, well, what seems my resolve to leave college books, literature texts I’m supposed to pore over, print-outs of Psychology related paraphernalia I wonder when I’ll start mugging, boring Media Laws awaiting more mugging, profiles, (some relief) movie and book reviews, untouched. Almost.

What I have been doing is the usual. Watching movies and reading more books with the occasional digression of falling suddenly, violently ill and then recovering just as abruptly. But I did (joyously) shop for books! Nice collect this time. Bought more Terry Pratchett – The Fifth Elephant which I’m already done gobbling. Don’t you simply love Sam Vimes? And more  of Carrot and Angua chemistry (That does sound crass, doesn’t it? Heehee), if you can call the weird Terry Pratchett romance romance.

Also purchased Jeanette Winterson’s Boating for Beginners and The Passion. I’ve vowed  not to rest until my bookshelf is furnished with her complete works. I did surprise myself by buying Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which I can’t wait to read now. Meanwhile I’ve had to content myself with opening the book randomly and sniffing at the new pages. Smell of brand new books!

What I did manage to read, and succeed in leaving myself stranded in, is Literary Occasions by VS Naipaul which, apart from being ever so slightly dry, is quite an interesting read. I did get to read the Nobel Lecture I’ve wanted to for a while now, but hadn’t been able to bring myself to strain my eyes on the online version which I’ve got stored away somewhere. But admittedly, it wasn’t as remarkable as I expected it to be. The essays aren’t written exclusively for the book, which is simply a collection of various essays by Naipaul amassed over the length of his literary career, forewords to many of his novels and some accessory writing.  So a lot of what appears in one tends to repeat in others, subtly rearranged. But the first essay “Reading and Writing” was worth the trouble.

The other book I’m bang in the middle of is The Routledge Creative Writing Coursebook. I tend to be apprehensive about borrowing How To books, especially where writing is concerned. But I thought I’d risk this one because it has dozens of writing suggestions and exercises some of which I might be persuaded to try over the end-semester holidays. Also, I was similarly distrustful of writing workshops earlier where I’ve happily been proven wrong. Moreover, the book illustrates each topic with the whole or extracts of some very good pieces of writing. I must make a note of them and look them up. Some more nice holiday reading (the others being The Magus by John Fowles and A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, plus American Gods).

Must run now. I have an exam tomorrow and should know better than to unashamedly blog at a time like this.

Meanwhile, here’s a wonderful poem, courtesy The Coursebook:

Sandra Lee Scheuer

(Killed at Kent State University, May 4, 1970 by the Ohio National Guard)

You might have met her on a Saturday night,
cutting precise circles, clockwise, at the Moon-Glo
Roller Rink, or walking with quick step

between the campus and a green two-storey house,
where the room was always tidy, the bed made,
the books in confraternity on the shelves.

She did not throw stones, major in philosophy
or set fire to buildings, though acquaintances say
she hated war, had heard of Cambodia.

In truth she wore a modicum of make-up, a brassiere,
and could no doubt more easily have married a guardsman
than cursed or put a flower in his rifle barrel.

While the armouries burned, she studied,
bent low over notes, speech therapy books, pages
open at sections on impairment, physiology.

And while they milled and shouted on the commons,
she helped a boy named Billy with his lisp, saying
Hiss, Billy, like a snake. That’s it, SSSSSSSS,

tongue well up and back behind your teeth.
Now buzz, Billy, like a bee. Feel the air
vibrating in my windpipe as I breathe?

As she walked in sunlight through the parking-lot
at noon, feeling the world a passing lovely place,
a young guardsman, who had his sights on her,

was going down on one knee, as if he might propose.
His declaration, unmistakable, articulate,
flowered within her, passed through her neck,

severed her trachea, taking her breath away.
Now who will burn the midnight oil for Billy,
ensure the perilous freedom of his speech;

and who will see her skating at the Moon-Glo
Roller Rink, the eight small wooden wheels
making their countless revolutions on the floor?

Gary Geddes

Think of it waiting three hundred million years,
not a hare hiding in the last stand of wheat,
but a premonition of stone, a moonlit reef
where corals reach for the light through clear
waters of warm Palaeozoic seas.
In its limbs lies the story of the earth,
the living ocean, then the slow birth
of limestone from the long trajectories
of starfish, feather stars, crinoids and crushed shells
that fill with calcite, harden, wait for the quarryman,
the timed explosion and the sculptor’s hand.
Then the hare, its eye a planet, springs from the chisel
to stand in the grass, moonlight’s muscle and bone,
the stems of sea lilies slowly turned to stone.

*

Quiet Harbor by Leonid Afremov

This morning I finished reading Making it Up by Penelope Lively, which I was awfully excited about when I first found it as the blurb touted that the book was positioned on an alternate universe structure, albeit a different one to that of those in the category similar to The Butterfly Effect and other such stories, because Lively had used her own life as a take-off point and written something of an alternate autobiography. She examines through the novel the life she might have led had she made different choices than the ones she had.

The effectiveness of such an exercise is debatable. Lively builds upon the stories using her real life as the base but moves in different trajectories than the ones that actually occurred, but, the readers who are unaware of the biographical details of her life will obviously find it puzzling when she begins each new chapter with something entirely out of the blue (like I did, not being a regular reader of  Lively and without any general interest in her personal life – in fact I hadn’t even heard of her before I found this book; but that just points at my own ignorance, does it?) which she alone recognizes as a   breaking away from the sequence of factual events, but which the readers cannot understand completely until the end of the chapter where Lively has inserted a note on why and how these particular characters were born and what unmade choices motivate their lives.

The book is called a “novel”, a term whose accuracy in defining what the book actually is I’m definitely beginning to doubt. Each chapter unveils with an ensemble of characters wholly diverse from the ones in the previous or the later ones. I was wondering what Lively may have wanted to articulate through this peculiar construction. That you and I will not be the same persons we are now if we had followed other paths, but entirely different characters, so discordant as to merit new names and new histories? Granted, maybe, but the novel was still too disconnected for me. (Or is it me who’s stagnating as a reader, with stultified views on what constitutes a novel?)

Well, I’m not convinced. The alternate universe framework of the “novel” still seems a very clever camouflage for what is actually a collection of short stories. Whichever, the book certainly lacked energy and does not deserve a thorough read (least of all a second one).

I do love the idea of “confabulation” as a literary device, though. Penelope Lively writes in the preface to the book:

This book is fiction. If anything, it is an anti-memoir. My own life serves as a prompt; I have homed in upon the rocks, the rapids, the whirlpools, and written the alternative stories. It is a form of confabulation. That word has a precise meaning: in psychiatric terminology, it refers to the creation of imaginary remembered experiences which replace the gaps left by disorders of the memory. My memory is not yet disordered; this exercise in confabulation is a piece of fictional license.

*

I also found Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (I love the title, by the way) in the college library today. I’ve already read parts of the first few chapters of the book — sometime last year, I think. I hate it when I’ve read a little of a book before and have to go back and read the whole thing again because, otherwise, I won’t fully understand what’s happening.  So I was slightly anxious when I began afresh, constantly looking to see if there were things I recalled from my last reading. I’ve retained a sense of what happens in the beginning of the book, because of its uniqueness. Fortunately I seem to have forgotten the details.

Here’s a teaser:

In his arms he has a pile of galleys; he sets them down gently, as if the slightest jolt could upset the order of the printed letters. “A publishing house is a fragile organism, dear sir,” he says. “If at any point something goes askew, then the disorder spreads, chaos opens beneath our feet. Forgive me, won’t you? When I think about it I have an attack of vertigo.” And he covers his eyes, as if pursued by the sight of billions of pages, lines, words, whirling in a dust storm.

Can’t wait to properly immerse myself in this book; but first I have to finish whatever else I’ve left languishing among the other library books. Hmph.

But I don’t really buy books as often as I make it sound I do, and as often as I’d like to, if I’m honest. Most of the books I read come from the lot of libraries I’m a member of. I’m not complaining. There are a lot of good things about being a member of (many) libraries. You can borrow and read a lot of books, at a very affordable rate, for one. The advantage is not only in the number of books you have access to, but also the diversity. You find books you normally wouldn’t come across at an average bookshop, and sometimes, ones you wouldn’t find at a brilliant bookshop as well. The libraries I’ve loved also have a very comfortable atmosphere, they make you want to read (which is more than can be said about the library at college).

And no, I don’t really expect the books I borrow from the library to all be in good condition and have spellbinding cover art; to be so demanding is obviously foolish. But the books I buy should not only be adorned with excellent cover art, but should also be made of very high-quality paper, and have lovely font; not jarring, ornate font, but the nice-conventional kind.

When I say “good cover art” I don’t only mean ones which are skillfully designed, painted, etc, the phrase also extends to include good photography. In fact a lot of my favourite examples for good cover “art” are eye-catching photographs.

But there are definitely more instances where the author/storyline/style of writing scores over other books with great cover art. Of course, it goes without saying, the sum of parts should converge into a very powerful whole to appeal. All this because, for me, books are collectibles and reminders of a great many hours of enjoyable reading plus  a celebration of exceptional writing. As Jonathan Gibbs says in the Independent, books are (to a certain kind of reader) “beautiful, covetable, keep-able” objects.

“Covetable”  -  exactly.

Here’s an extract from the article in the Independent where Jonathan Gibbs writes about cover art:

“Wherever you stand on the future of the book – doomed to oblivion by the Kindle, or an indestructible part of our cultural life – there’s no doubt that recent years have seen a golden age of book design. There are of course whole bookshop shelves full of cheap, dull, generic products, but for those who know where to look, books have rarely been more interesting to look at, hold and open.

Partly this is a case of big publishers relying on brilliant design to make their goods stand out in an increasingly difficult market; but partly, too, it’s a case of small, independent publishers springing up to provide a certain kind of reader with what they want, more than ever: the book as beautiful, covetable, keep-able object.

You could argue that the current renaissance in book design came about thanks to Penguin, always the most design-savvy of publishers. In 2004 they produced their first series of Great Ideas – small paperback editions of classic, mostly philosophical texts. They had highly tactile covers and used bold period typography to give a sense of when and where each book was coming from. The following year we got Penguin by Design, an illustrated history of 70 years of Penguin covers, and then, in 2007, Seven Hundred Penguins, a two-inch-thick collection of the best covers, shown life-size, one to a page. For seasoned haunters of second-hand bookshops, this particular item was as thrilling as a similar-sized brick of Class A drugs.

[…]

It’s no surprise that good book design often comes with reissues, not least of classics. After all, anything out of copyright leaves more money for the presentation. Persephone Books, Hesperus Press, Pushkin Press and Capuchin Classics are four British independent publishers that specialise in bringing back into print often long-neglected works, helped along by some beautiful design. Persephone are distinctive for their uniform grey jackets – it’s only when you open them that you find the bright-coloured endpapers, sourced from fabrics dating from the time of the book’s setting or writing.”

Read the rest of the article here.

I was first prompted to write something about cover art by a feature The Sunday Herald (the Sunday supplement of Deccan Herald, Bangalore, and not, as the newspaper’s website proclaims, Scotland’s award-winning independent newspaper) ran a couple of months ago.

It spoke about how cover art has now transformed from being only promotion-oriented into a sort of artistic genre in itself. A pretty good article from what I remember of it; got me thinking about all the books I’d judged by the cover. Unfortunately I’ve lost the link, and I’m finding it really hard to trace its origin online – Deccan Herald’s website is very difficult to navigate through and they also have a useless search engine.

Here are some book covers I love: