I didn’t know much about Lionel Shriver’s critically acclaimed 2003 novel until recently. I’d heard of it, knew that it had won the Orange Prize for Fiction several years ago, and that it was a much-loved book for many people, but beyond that I didn’t even know the detail of what it was about. Now that a film adaptation has been made, and it has been featured all over the TV and press recently, my interest was piqued – primarily due to the fact that the film is directed by Lynne Ramsey, whom I like very much. Before seeing the film I wanted to read the book. I wanted to visit the source material before watching the adaptation, which is why I came to read this book now.

I finished reading it last night; I’m writing this without having had much time to digest it. These are my general impressions of the book  in the immediate aftermath of having read it, and it’s possible that in time my opinions about it might change. But for now, in a nutshell, my opinion of it is this: it’s a book that I admire, but I didn’t enjoy it at all.  Maybe enjoyment isn’t the point – it’s such an unremittingly grim, horrible, nasty book, it’s impossible to enjoy it. But even so, I have problems with it that go beyond what an unpleasant read it is.

The book is set a year after almost-16-year-old Kevin Katchadourian has used a crossbow to massacre several of his fellow high-school students, a teacher, and a cafeteria worker. Told through a series of letters written by Kevin’s mother, Eva, to her absent husband, Franklin, Eva tells the story of Kevin’s childhood and the impact that his arrival had on their marriage. She also writes of her present-day-life, as the mother of a notorious killer, the condemnation or compassion of strangers, and her weekly trips to visit her son in prison.

Although I admired the quality and precision of Shriver’s writing, the book threw up all sorts of questions for me – and I wasn’t sure if this was a good or a bad thing. Good because it was making me think, or Bad because I was finding it lacking in some way. One problem was that I never believed in Kevin as genuine, realistic, flesh-and-blood, someone-like-this-could-really-exist character. Yes, I believed in his crime; it was the 16 years of his life that preceded it that I had trouble with.  From the moment he is born he is portrayed as a rage-filled, cold, sullen, sneering, monstrous horror of a child. Not until he is ten-years-old, and ill, do we witness a single moment of weakness or child-like vulnerability. He is relentlessly portrayed as being cruel, sadistic and highly manipulative.  I found this lack of light and shade troubling. I didn’t believe that a young child could maintain such an unshakable persona without it at least occasionally cracking and a glimmer of some semblance of child-like vulnerability shining through.

However, what I had to bear in mind while reading it was that these letters are being written by Eva after her son has committed mass murder, and she is re-examining his childhood in the light of that tragedy. So it’s hardly surprising that she’s focusing on the worst aspects of his personality and the moments of sadistic cruelty that peppered his childhood.  The question that I kept coming back to while reading it was: How reliable a narrator is Eva? The cold, bald facts of what she writes are never in doubt – she’s not a liar; in fact, she’s unflinchingly honest –  it’s more her interpretation and perception of events that one is never entirely certain of trusting.

Eva is the globe-trotting creator of a hugely successful series of budget travel guides, the wonderfully titled On a Wing and a Prayer. She remains an enigmatic and impenetrable character throughout. Erudite and intellectual, her voice remains cool and unemotional in her letters to Franklin.  In her struggles with motherhood and her inability to bond with her son, Eva does come across as a well-drawn – yet not entirely sympathetic – character. Franklin, however, never really did it for me. He’s a Reagan-loving republican who has a Happy Days 1950s vision of a perfect family life that renders him seemingly incapable of seeing any flaws in his son’s behaviour. He comes across as a bit of a drip. Had the novel been set over the course of a few months then I might have found this more credible, but it covers sixteen years, and I didn’t find his character entirely believable. I was left wondering what the hell Eva saw in him.

And here comes the crux of why I find this a difficult book to like: Eva talks of her love for Franklin, but one never feels it. It is a cerebral book of ideas rather than a visceral book of raw emotion. This permeates every aspect of the story. The book made me think but it didn’t make me feel. Yes, I was left feeling shaken by the end of it – and it is rare for a book to do that to me – but I felt like I’d been toyed with in a not entirely pleasant way; it had a feel of artifice about it that I could never shake off.

Still, I’m glad that I read this novel, although I almost certainly will never read it again. It has power, I’ll give it that, but the ability to pack-a-punch alone does not necessarily a good novel make. It seemed to me to be a book of ideas and scenarios contrived to spark debate – and in that is is very successful; but where it lacked for me was in emotional veracity. I’ve never read any of Shriver’s other work, so I don’t know if this emotionally detached quality is unique to this book – as a carefully constructed component of Eva’s personality – or if it’s typical of all of her writing. Maybe, in the future, I’ll come to read other works by Shriver that give me a renewed respect for this book – because they give me a context in which to view it.

So, I admired this book – Shriver is undoubtedly a skilful and talented writer, and I admired the brave, unflinching way she confronted the subject – but I didn’t enjoy it. In fact, I hated it.

I’m not sure I want to see the film now.