Notes on We Need To Talk About Kevin and Nice Guys

The beginnings are almost always the most difficult. I think I might have a fear of blank pages. They leave me in such a state of confusion that it is a wonder that I have written so many posts on this blog.

Mena had been suggesting that I read it for a year and a bit but I ignored her. You see, Mena isn't like all of my other friends, she won't suggest that I read Revenge Wears Prada, or The Confessions of A Shopaholic. She doesn't suggest that I read books that leave me exactly as I was before I started reading them, instead she suggests that I read earth shattering, mind breaking books that go down like flavoured water and remain in me like lead. As I write this, I'm in such a state of internal turmoil that I do not know what to do with myself. This is what We Need To Talk About Kevin does to people. 

The main character and narrator of the book, Eva Katchdourian, tells her experience of love and motherhood, through a series of letters to her apparently estranged husband, Franklin. It's about conversations that she should have had, and things she should have done, or could have done, and it's about that one question that parents are loathe to answer when their children do not turn out as they expected, is it my fault?

Readers of the book are quick to say that they dislike Eva, and that she was unfit to be a mother, but I found that I liked her. Her side of the story is so irresistible that by the end even her sternest critics cannot say that they do not understand her, or that they do not empathise with her. 

Two of the most spectacular lines in the book were:

"But any woman who passes a clump of testosterone-drunk punks without picking up the pace, without avoiding the eye contact that might connote challenge or invitation, without sighing inwardly with relief by the following block is a zoological fool"

So true...

and;

"whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed."

This brings me to a topic that's been done to death, the nice guy versus the bad guy hingyjingy. 

Don't get fresh with me, hingyjingy is an actual word. It is because I'm a grown blogger and I can do whatever I want. That was awful. Forgive me. I'm a little rusty.

You all know the cliché argument that girls hardly ever offer nice guys anything but their friendship. Well, in my opinion this is true. It isn't true because nice guys are outclassed by douchebags and bad boys with motorcycles. It is true because, if after taking the time to get to know someone all they can think of to say about you is that you are nice, then you haven't done a very good job. Nice is just so blasé. It means that there isn't anything that's even remotely interesting about you. You might as well be a well trained West Yorkshire Highland Terrier and if she wanted that, she'd buy the dog and leave you. And that's all I have to say about that. On to the next post.

Happy days,

Afam

ps. we need to talk about Kevin is a must read