Shriver uses the page (455) itself as an opportunity for Eva’s character to justify the actions and the, apparent, true intentions and thoughts of her son, Kevin. As we do not hear this from Kevin himself, due to the affectionless psychopathy he...

Throughout the novels – Iain Bank’s The Wasp Factory of 1984, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin from 2003 – the authors depict the protagonists as subversive outsider figures, as they each have only one friend – Frank’s Jamie, whom...