Kevin and Kell - Bill Holbrook

Advantages: Gets the child used to the idea.
Disadvantages: Reminds you your babies no longer a baby.

...The book I am now going to review actually brought me to tears when reading it to my three year old son, the contents of the book made a lump appear in my throat and suddenly brought the depressing realisation to me that my baby is no longer actually a baby! The book I will now review is "Kevin goes to school"….. sniff, sob! Now any parent that has been through this terrifying ordeal will sympathise with my feelings, I am not one of those soft hearted mothers that clings to their child sobbing uncontrollably at the school gates on their first day at school, when my daughter started I was very controlled, calm and collected, I wasn't even phased when a friend of mine whose twins were in my daughters class completely broke down and had to be helped from the classroom, I did however have a little cry on the way home! Soon it will be... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Original topic for a novel
Disadvantages: Hard going in some earlier parts, tendancy to ramble

...With this book, the American author won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005. Shriver changed her name from Margaret Ann to Lionel as a teenager, as she believed men had it easier. This was also selected to be part of Richard & Judy's Summer Reads for 2005, and was featured on the BBC's Page Turners programme. The book grabbed me from page one, I knew the synopsis from the back cover, and the book starts with a letter from mother, Eva, to estranged husband, Franklin, a year and eight months after the tragic events at their son Kevin's High School where he murdered seven fellow students, a teacher and a cafeteria worker. After Eva bumps into the mother of one of the murdered students in the supermarket she feels compelled to start writing to Franklin letters talking of her current situation as well as recalling the past, going... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Elegantly written, Well researched, Gets you thinking, Compelling narrative
Disadvantages: Not a light read - can be heartbreaking and bleak in places

..."We Need To Talk About Kevin" Lionel Shriver £9.99 Serpent's Tail paperback, 400 pages "We need to talk about Kevin" by Lionel Shriver, winner of the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction, has to be one of the best - and most provocative - books I have read in years. It is both a literary feat and an excoriating account of American society, modern parenting, and the phenomenon of Columbine-style school shootings. "Kevin" is shocking in two ways; firstly in its controversial perspective on parenting, and motherhood in particular, and secondly in that this book has as its subject Eva Khatchadourian, a woman who is coming to terms with the murderous actions of her teenage son whilst internally debating the extent of her own culpability for his actions. So shocking is this book that when initially presented with it, Shriver's agent refused to... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful