Okay, you guys warned me about this one, and you were right — devastating doesn’t begin to describe it.
“…You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.”
Written as a series of letters to her husband, Eva Khatchadourian tells us the story of a Thursday that will forever be burned into her mind and the minds of her fellow townspeople — the day that her teenage son murdered seven of his classmates, as well as a a cafeteria worker and a teacher. Eva uses the letters to try to figure out not only why, but how things went so terribly long. It’s heart-breaking to read about her relationship with her son, difficult and withdrawn from the very beginning, as well as how he affected her relationship with her husband and their daughter.
Countless school shootings are brought up in this book, but it’s the intensity and descriptions of what Kevin did that really got to me. And poor Eva, who will spend her whole life living Kevin’s punishment along with him — which seems like his intent all along. It’s a difficult book to read, and it definitely made an impact on me.
I think it’s been about five years since I read this, and honestly just seeing the title still makes my stomach drop. The scene where the plot twist is discovered, to put it lightly, is burned on my brain.
I won’t say that I saw the plot twist coming, but I knew something MORE was, and it kept me reading even though I was terrified because I felt certain that it couldn’t be worse than what I imagined.
It was.