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From Publishers Weekly

A number of fictional attempts have been made to portray what might lead a teenager to kill a number of schoolmates or teachers, Columbine style, but Shriver's is the most triumphantly accomplished by far.

A gifted journalist as well as the author of seven novels, she brings to her story a keen understanding of the intricacies of marital and parental relationships as well as a narrative pace that is both compelling and thoughtful. Eva Khatchadourian is a smart, skeptical New Yorker whose impulsive marriage to Franklin, a much more conventional person, bears fruit, to her surprise and confessed disquiet, in baby Kevin. From the start Eva is ambivalent about him, never sure if she really wanted a child, and he is balefully hostile toward her; only good-old-boy Franklin, hoping for the best, manages to overlook his son's faults as he grows older, a largely silent, cynical, often malevolent child.

The later birth of a sister who is his opposite in every way, deeply affectionate and fragile, does nothing to help, and Eva always suspects his role in an accident that befalls little Celia. The narrative, which leads with quickening and horrifying inevitability to the moment when Kevin massacres seven of his schoolmates and a teacher at his upstate New York high school, is told as a series of letters from Eva to an apparently estranged Franklin, after Kevin has been put in a prison for juvenile offenders.

This seems a gimmicky way to tell the story, but is in fact surprisingly effective in its picture of an affectionate couple who are poles apart, and enables Shriver to pull off a huge and crushing shock far into her tale. It's a harrowing, psychologically astute, sometimes even darkly humorous novel, with a clear-eyed, hard-won ending and a tough-minded sense of the difficult, often painful human enterprise.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In a series of brutally introspective missives to her husband, Franklin, from whom she is separated, Eva tries to come to grips with the fact that their 17-year-old son, Kevin, has killed seven students and two adults... Guiltily she recalls how, as a successful writer, she was terrified of having a child. Was it for revenge, then, that from the moment of his birth Kevin was the archetypal difficult child, screaming for hours, refusing to nurse, driving away countless nannies, and intuitively learning to "divide and conquer" his parents? When their daughter, loving and patient Celia, is born, Eva feels vindicated; but as the gap between her view of Kevin as a "Machiavellian miscreant" and Franklin's efforts to explain away their son's aberrant behavior grows wider, they find themselves facing divorce.

In crisply crafted sentences that cut to the bone of her feelings about motherhood, career, family, and what it is about American culture that produces child killers, Shriver yanks the reader back and forth between blame and empathy, retribution and forgiveness. Never letting up on the tension, Shriver ensures that, like Eva, the reader grapples with unhealed wounds. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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我們是著了什麼魔？原本如此的快樂！那麼為什麼，
我們會以所擁有的一切為賭注，投入這場豪賭，決定生小孩？

　　1999年的一個星期四，即將滿16歲的凱文，在校園內射殺了9個人。他的母親艾娃在一連串寫給丈夫的懺悔信中，回溯懷胎前的猶豫及懷胎後生下凱文，一直到兒子成了殺人犯的整個過程。這位母親自兒子一出生起就討厭他。凱文隨著成長所展露出的毀滅性格更是令她心生畏懼。艾娃試圖從回顧中釐清自己所應背負的過錯與導致這樁慘劇的原因，到最後竟發展出始料未及的結果……

　　在這本描繪扭曲母性的精彩小說裡，以校園慘案兇手母親的角度，尖銳地探討美國文化與青少年犯罪之間的關聯，更藉由凱文這個極端的例子，碰觸了一個極為敏感的問題──母親無法接受自己的孩子。作者不時在書中展現精闢的見解，讓讀者對艾娃在譴責與同情之間擺盪。故事接近尾聲時出現懾人心魄的驚悚、扣人心弦的領悟，在讀者內心留下巨大衝擊。

「在描繪導致青少年殺戮的原因這方面，有不少小說嘗試過表現……但絲薇佛顯然是其中最成功的一位。絲薇佛極富寫作天才……錯綜複雜的夫妻與親子關係，在故事中有敏銳的體認，同時敘述步調緊湊與細膩兼顧。這是本痛苦折磨的，深刻剖析人性的，有時甚且展現出黑色幽默的小說，結尾得來不易的領悟震撼透徹，對艱難且往往是痛苦的人類事業，有寫實的刻畫。」
——《出版人週刊》，推薦書評（Publishers Weekly, starred review）

「鞭闢入?，直切核心，以精闢筆法呈現個人對家庭、事業、做媽媽的感受，深刻論述美國文化與青少年殺人犯之間的關連，作者絲薇佛讓讀者在譴責與心領神會的同情之間擺盪，在嚴懲罪犯與寬宥之間來回拉扯，從頭至尾張力不斷，讓讀者與主人翁艾娃一同對抗尚未痊癒的傷痛。」
——《書訊》，推薦書評（Booklist, starred review）

「今夏大爆冷門的文藝暢銷書……作者絲薇佛以精湛的寫作技巧，探索晚年產子的動機與後果。雖然我們不能選擇父母，也無法選擇生下來的是什麼樣的孩子，但我們很幸運的可以選擇要閱讀什麼樣的書。」
——《奧勒岡人報》（The Oregonian）

「一部思想深刻，強烈擾動人心的小說，講述一位母親，與兒子在柯林頓時代犯下的暴行，如何調適妥協的過程……內容與形式完美的交織，藉艾娃寫給丈夫法蘭克林的系列懺悔信件呈現，迅速跳脫常與校園槍擊案連結的所有表面『原因』。《凱文怎麼了？》利用這個極端的案例，衝擊家庭生活中一個隱穢的秘密：儘管一般期待父母無條件的愛孩子，但有時候孩子就是無法成為好人——或者，更令人難以啟齒的是，為人父母者並不真的喜歡他們的孩子。直到高潮迭宕的結尾，揭露驚人的真相後，作者這隻看不見的幕後黑手才終於悄然拉開簾幕，顯現母子間最真實的聯繫。」
——《洋蔥》（The Onion）

「蘭諾．絲薇佛的故事引人入勝，鏗鏘有力，擲地有聲，令人信服，以青少年屠殺的浮世繪為骨架，隱喻更大的悲劇——在一個事事順遂的國家裡，沒人挨餓受凍，什麼都可以用錢買到，但就是買不到目的感的悲劇。」
——《富比士》（Forbes）

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