She is part of a small nuclear unit with no extended family. She feels that she is unlike other mothers and is “not following the program.” She repeatedly and savagely denigrates herself until she is filled up with all these difficult feelings and unable to talk to anyone about them.
And I kept waiting.Įva turns her anger and frustration inward and begins to blame herself. Though I’d been warned that I wouldn’t lactate on demand like a cafeteria milk dispenser, I kept trying he kept resisting he liked the other nipple no better. Sucking is one of our few innate instincts, but with his mouth right at my enlarged brown nipple, his head lolled away in distaste. His body was inert I could only interpret his lassitude as a lack of enthusiasm. The expression on his twisted face was disgruntled. She tries breastfeeding Kevin and his response feels punishing: When Eva holds him for the first time she feels nothing: “I felt-absent, I kept scrabbling around in myself for this new indescribable emotion, like stirring a crowded silverware drawer for the potato peeler, but no matter how I rattled around, no matter what I moved out of the way, it wasn’t there.”Įva’s attempts to satisfy her son often seem to fail. Her idealisation of motherhood prevents Eva from experiencing any real connection to her son Kevin.
“transformed” and “transported.” She wants it to be “nothing short of revelation.” Of course, Eva’s idea of motherhood cannot ever be realised. It shows motherhood as a painful experience, describing the anguish and frustration of a mother trying to form a bond with her baby, and the tragic consequences of this failure in the infant-mother bond.Įva Katchadourian wants motherhood to be a metamorphic experience in which she is, in some way, Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin is a novel about post-natal depression.
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