Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

14 reviews

goblinghost_39's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Murder, Violence, Death, Mental illness, Blood, Mass/school shootings, Pregnancy, and Gun violence

madelinequinne's review

challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Well this certainly cemented the fact that I don’t ever want kids. Kevin continuously made me so angry throughout this novel, and the absolute heartbreak i felt at the end when we find out he murdered his little sister too, that just absolutely broke me. This is such a difficult book at times because of how awful the topic is, but overall I would just describe this book as sad. It’s incredibly well written, and this is the most emotion i’ve ever felt after reading a book to date, so brb, gonna go cry 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Murder, Child death, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Emotional abuse, Grief, Mass/school shootings, and Violence

Moderate: Body shaming, Bullying, Cursing, Gaslighting, Suicidal thoughts, Pregnancy, Hate crime, Eating disorder, Blood, Death of parent, Classism, Fatphobia, Sexual assault, Alcohol, and Racism

anhedonia_n_anomie's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Torture, Gaslighting, and Emotional abuse

Minor: Mass/school shootings

phantomgecko's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Character wise, everyone sucks in this book.

Franklin sucks in general, but in regards to a child, he sucked hardcore. A great way to ruin your marriage is to put your kids first. And like, yeah postpartum depression and even postpartum psychosis make Eva a little rough, but dang dude. He didn't need to gaslight her like that. If you legit take the word of your child over your spouse, you're proving the trust in your relationship isn't there. And if you don't trust each other, what is the point?

Is Eva an unreliable narrator? Probably? Should she have had kids? With her motivations, probably not. Did she try her damnedest? Looks like it. Should she have gotten her entire family counseling? Yeah, baby! She also should have stood up for herself more? But these things aren't what makes her suck. It's the stuck up, hypocritical attitude that Kevin rightly points out. (This side of her doesn't come out super often throughout, so she sucks the least.)

And obviously Kevin sucks because that's the point of the book.

There's a lot of philosophizing and social commentary and introspection in this book. Like it's 66% that. Interesting monologue, but it does make everything drag so

Also don't think the nasty mess with the drama teacher was necessary. It was overtly obscene. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mass/school shootings and Sexual content

Moderate: Bullying, Death, Homophobia, Misogyny, Animal death, Death of parent, Eating disorder, Sexism, Body shaming, Fatphobia, Gaslighting, Murder, Alcoholism, and Child abuse

Minor: Adult/minor relationship

triangular_pascal's review against another edition

challenging dark tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

Extremely uncomfortable to read -then again, perhaps that's the point, to confront that which makes us uneasy. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Genocide, Murder, Gaslighting, Death of parent, Child death, Death, Body horror, Gun violence, Domestic abuse, Gore, Grief, and Mass/school shootings

Moderate: Murder, Racial slurs, Hate crime, Bullying, Racism, Sexism, Drug use, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Classism, Cultural appropriation, Cursing, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Body shaming, and Gaslighting

ajlct's review against another edition

challenging dark tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

It's an excellent technical display of unlikeable characters and an unreliable narrator, but ultimately there was nothing redeeming about this book that made me glad to have read it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Gun violence, Child abuse, Cursing, Medical trauma, Murder, Racial slurs, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Ableism, Child death, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Mass/school shootings, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Racism, Sexual harassment, and Violence

soph1768's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Mass/school shootings, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Toxic relationship

Minor: Sexual harassment

robinudell's review against another edition

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

Spoiler

Oof. I understand why people would have clamored for a book like this in the early aughts, but I'm struggling to see what a modern reader would glean from it. I don't have a problem with unlikable female characters- in fact I tend to gravitate towards them. But in this case, I think it was less the character of Eva and more the underlying contempt of the reader by the author that I was alienated by. The constant railing against American Culture TM was tiresome enough, but the casual fat phobia, racism, and bad faith arguments about "political correctness" were jarring, and sadly seem to line up with the author's stated beliefs.

The idea of a child born supernaturally evil is not only a rip off of The Fifth Child, it's just a lazy, inaccurate, and unimaginative explanation for people who commit mass violence. Kevin's actions don't make any sense, and don't offer insight into actual mass shooting events. If you want to talk about ambivalence in motherhood and the fear of raising a monster, there are more effective ways to do that. If you're trying to write horror, do that. But walking this weird line between the two just isn't as deep or profound as it was clearly intended to be.

Spoiler

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Child abuse, Death, Gaslighting, Mass/school shootings, and Violence

julianahughes's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Gaslighting, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Mental illness, Murder, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, and Violence

waitforhightide's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I bought this book on a Book Date with my spouse and was excited to read it. I had stumbled upon the movie on Netflix several years ago, and while I've relaxed my <i> I MUST READ THE BOOK FIRST</I> policy, I do like to go back and read source material for movies.

For reference, the movie really affected me, and I had a lot of emotions watching it, as a childless white person who is afraid of being pregnant or having children; and also as a millennial who has lived during the school shooting era. 

the remainder of this review is under spoiler text below, with spoilers and references to both the book and the movie.

Spoiler

While the movie <i>We Need to Talk About Kevin</i> is intriguing, leaving the viewer (or at least leaving me) wondering how much of Eva's experiences were because of Kevin's behavior and how much was her emotional reaction to being a reluctant mother with a challenging child, I really felt that the parts that were just in the novel and not the film adaptation soured the story for me. I found Eva as a narrator pretentious to a fault, and dripping with privilege in a way that she (and the author?) somehow manages to acknowledge and do absolutely <i>nothing</i> about at the same time. Where the movie left me sympathetic to her, almost everything in the book--from being a self-proclaimed liberal person living with a staunch Republican and never seeming to see this as an issue, to being a woman with wealth but never seeking psychiatric help for her children, or even attempting--left me annoyed. 

I think I would have given this book another quarter or half star if the interview with the author pages afterwards were not written in almost exactly the same tone of voice, implying to me that Lionel Shriver is writing a somewhat dark and speculative piece of fiction without ever once bothering to deviate from her own high class, borderline-academic, high-brow writing style. I may have seen Eva as a sharp-edged and uncomfortable critique on what the upper-middle-class suburban parent contributes to the psychology of their sons as school shooters if I was even once able to distinguish Shriver's personal voice from Eva's narration.

That said, I could not, and I was left frustrated and annoyed with a book that pointed out so many flaws, both personal and systemic, in the story, and managed to grow from, reflect on, or even truly empathize with almost none of them.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pregnancy, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Mass/school shootings, and Death

Moderate: Gaslighting