We Need To Talk About Kevin

Eva is Kevin’s mother. The novel unfolds via the letters she writes to Franklin, her deceased husband. Eva is a complicated character. She can be, by her own admission, vain, petty, materialistic, resentful, and aloof. As someone with Armenian heritage, she believes that sorrow is in her blood. Eva writes a series of successful travel guides for a company called A Wing and a Prayer, and her ability to travel for work has always satisfied her need for adventure. She agrees to have a child, Kevin, with Franklin out of the hope that a baby will fulfill a new need for her and give her even more approval than she already has. However, she and Kevin immediately dislike each other. Her resentment toward her own child—even before he becomes overtly hostile—shames her. Eva cannot understand why she feels so little toward Kevin as a baby. Her ambivalence toward motherhood becomes resentment as Kevin pits her against Franklin, and her old life becomes a mere memory.

Eva struggles with the idea that she is responsible for Kevin’s crimes. When she is forced to pay her own court fees in the Woolford Civil suit, she is glad she is forced to experience a punishment outside of the loss of Celia and Franklin.