Lionel Shriver

This afternoon at BBC World Services I meet author Lionel Shriver who has been made famous by her '03 book "We Have To Talk About Kevin" which has sold over 1,000,000 copies and won Shriver the '05 Orange Prize, one of the UK's most prestigious. Shriver was interviewed by Harriet Gilbert and I was one of fifteen invited into the the studio (Gilbert BTW has a wonderful, throaty, British voice that is immediately recognizable on-air). Unusual for most Americans who leap enthusiastically, Shriver paces her sentences and carefully selects her words. Occasionally she would re-state a phrase or ask for a re-take on an answer. I like this. The program discusses Kevin, which is a brutal depiction of a high-school slaying told from the perspective of the mother. The book caused considerable enthusiastic debate in my book club which was unable to answer a basic question: nature or nurture? The mom, you see, despised her son from pregnancy - heresy in our, and most societies. Shriver, for her part, leaves it open - and indeed, emphasises that the why does not matter. Instead of seeking blame or justice, she argues, certain things unexplainable and require .. healing. Shriver informs us her mental state decidedly depressed when she penned Kevin and this enabled her to get inside the protagonist's head; as for the book's namesake - she loves Kevin for his intelligence and humour. Any mother will tell you it is impossible not to love your creation.

Photo from the Guardian.