Mass murderer's momma with mass appeal

I'd never before read anything by Lionel Shriver. The subject matter of her literary achievement (winner of the Orange Prize) would never had tempted me were it not for its recommendation by two women whose writing taste I admire greatly - Anke and Lauren. (Now, thanks to our wedding and various accommodation logistics, the pair are now both fast friends as they are more literarily compatible with each other than either are with me!)

It's the story of ... yeah, how do I put it, the frequent missives of the mother of a teen mass murderer to her estranged husband, and it raises questions whether the environment and upbringing influences a child's behaviours or whether a child can be born innately evil.

It is dense writing, very highly tuned. As it's a collection of letters, written by a clearly well-educated woman in her 50's, it's believable. The pithiness of her writing serves as an intricate veil to savour the getting through of, while our unreliable narrator unravels this destructive and violent tale.

At times it became hard to believe that a woman who has had no children of her own would dare to write something so controversial. Difficult to accept that this woman did not interview any real-life 'Columbine' parents. But the neat and painful end is viewed through a lense of the absolute hatred and (perhaps in this case, even) love that only a parent can know. Oh, Eva is unlikeable and hypocritical, she is blind to her own influences on the little world around her. But we stand by her, hoping for her, but we're not quite sure for what. But we do it. Up to the very last page.

Negative points? Few. Sure, I think the portrayal of Kevin as a toddler through to a young teen is terribly unfair, while extremely creepy and excellent. But I have no children of my own. And Eva is writing these letters as a form of therapy to find that elusive closure one would search for after such a happening, so she summons the darkest of memories to put her point forward. I find something amiss in the fact that Eva talks so frequently about Thursday and the bald fact that her son is a killer ... but then I've not interviewed any real-life 'Columbine' parents. And of course, as the novel centres around the 2 year anniversary of this nightmare and Kevin is soon to turn 18, of course she's focussing on the facts. These are barely flaws I point out, though, and hell, we all know unlike Shriver, I'm no writer.

What I admire is the attention to detail, but above all, her fierce imagination. How she never told me, but always showed me! How I let myself be taken along the flow of beautiful prose to the point that I didn't stop to work out the twist. But how delighted (but also dismayed) I was to have the denouement unveiled before me in black-and-white. She so clearly illustrated the daily trials (in more ways than one) of motherhood, and the worst of all bad dreams - to discover that your child is capable of murder.

Do yourself a favour, and read this book. Not only will it force you to consider to what extent society has come to see violence as being part of the American teenage condition, but it talks about notions of family and its frequent failure to enable its members to really connect. Can children be born rotten to the core? Shriver will have us believe it, but only for a moment.

Un. Put. Downable.

My first Dutch novel

Yesterday at about 2pm, I finished my very first Dutch language novel, De Vliegeraar, by Khaled Hosseini. All 350 pages of it.

There's not a lot I can really say about its being a literary masterpiece, because half the time I was just happy to know what was going on.

But this time, that was the object.

What I feel most triumphant about is that it's the first book in ages that I've cried during reading ... and not once, not twice, but three times. For me, that means I was looking beyond the frustration of not really understanding every third word, but that I was being involved.

De Vliegeraar is set in Afghanistan and the US, told by the guilt-riddled narrator, Amir, who neatly unravels the tale of how he reaches salvation after 20 years of self-hatred and cowardice.

I may well re-read it in English to see whether I should have enjoyed (is that the right word?) it so much ... or maybe I'll just wait five years and re-read it in Dutch to capture the nuances I lost this time around.

A real accomplishment for me, she who never read such a long book in Italian or French! (And who now probably couldn't, if she tried!)