The Hindu : Front Page : `Difficult, dark' book wins women-only Orange Prize

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Thursday, Jun 09, 2005

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Front Page

`Difficult, dark' book wins women-only Orange Prize

Hasan Suroor

It expresses the fears women have about becoming mothers

— Photo: AP

Lionel Shriver with her prize.

LONDON: It is a theme that would send shivers down the spine of any mother, especially an expectant one. But now a novel about a woman who almost hates the child she is about to give birth to has won one of Britain's most prestigious literary prizes.

Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin has won the women-only £30,000 Orange Prize after beating five other contenders, including Jane Gardam's highly acclaimed Old Filth about the children of the Raj born to British civil servants in the colonies but packed off to England at an early age for education. Ms. Shriver's novel, her seventh, was rejected by 30 mainstream publishers before being accepted by an independent publishing house. But it really caught the headlines after it was noticed by The New York Times which praised it for giving women "permission to feel things they weren't allowed to feel."

Broadcaster Jenni Murray, who chaired the judges' panel, hailed it as a "courageous book which will resonate with everyone who has had a child or thought about having one."

"We Need to Talk About Kevin is a book that acknowledges what many women worry about but never express: the fear of becoming a mother and the terror of what kind of child one might bring into this world," she said.

The U.S.-born Ms. Shriver, who herself has no children and lives in London with her husband, described it as a "difficult" and "dark" book. "It is an uncomfortable book and it is a book about someone that a lot of people have difficulty liking ... there are a lot of people out there who hate this book," she said, adding that one consequence of writing the book was: "I scared myself witless and I still don't have any children." The novel is constructed around Eva who hates the thought of giving birth to a child, and when a boy, Kevin, is born he ends up as a pathological killer, murdering seven of his schoolmates.

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