WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

I've just returned from a busy trip to Florida where I had to empty out my aunt's home after it sold so that it could close in February. These are the two books I took along to read:

The Weight of Heaven by Thrity Umrigar
and
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Neither book was boding well with dead child and high school shooter subject matter, but I had nothing more compelling at hand. It's just as well. There was so much to do, that having books I didn't really want to be reading didn't distract me from the task at hand.

The Weight of Heaven by Thrity Umrigar was a dnf (did not finish). I loved Thrity's The Space Between Us for so many good reasons, but especially for the glimpse into the lives of everyday women in India. The Weight of Heaven is about an American couple whose 7 year old son died. They move to to India with the husband's company in an effort to revive their failing marriage. I don't even know what else, because halfway through I put this down and started on the Kevin book.

We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver - Here's a downer. For the first time I'm going to be a plot spoiler in order to save you. Here's how I read this book: Read one fourth of the way through and was going to put it down except then I'd have nothing to read when I fell into bed physically exhausted but unable to sleep right away. So I skipped the middle half of the book and started somewhere in the back. I'd only missed that now Kevin had gone from being an only child to having a 6 year old sister. The author writes the book in a series of letters to her husband who is no longer in the picture after their son did what he did. The author/narrator is a sarcastic judgmental woman who writes travel books. She's critical of people, but doesn't have an evil streak; still she is quite remorseless. I don't know whether her son was born with his predilection for mean acts and remorselessness or whether his mother gave that to him with the attitudes he picked up from her. That is the great question of this novel. Nature or Nurture? There are some unexpected twists at the end. Near the end of the book, I was angry with this male author who dared to write as a woman and mother. At the end of the book there are author discussions, and it turns out that Lionel is a woman, albeit childless, and she is very like her narrator. I will concede that this could be an interesting read, but not for the prurient reasons that the author espouses. I wouldn't want to do it again, and I can't wait to find some wonderful and compelling story to read next.

Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More - I'm listening to this CD as I write today, and I like it. Mumford & Sons is an English folk rock band formed in 2007 from what Wiki tells me. I first heard them on WXRT a couple of months ago, and it's an album I want to listen to until I know the words. I don't learn the words to songs like I used to. There is so much variety today. With iTunes, you listen to different music rather than the same thing over and over like we used to do with records and CDs. With everything new, you lose the catharsis of the familiar, to quote Peter's track coach who is also an english teacher. In that case, I'm going to fire up Sigh No More once again.