The sins of the mother

And you've never been hit with the pang?

Nope. I haven't. And that's one of the things I tried to work out while writing the book -- well, what is wrong with me? And I think there is a percentage of women out there who go through the same thing. We're told that the biological clock is ticking and suddenly you're supposed to experience this mindless desire for a baby. And it doesn't happen to some people. It continues to be on an intellectual level. And I guess I came to the conclusion that since it didn't happen to me, and it was only there on an intellectual level, then I shouldn't have them. Because that's not good enough. I can make lists until the cows come home about why it's important to have children -- somebody's got to do it -- but I can't talk myself into it.

After everything you've read and considered about these shootings, why do you think they do it?

Two things. First off, every incident has its own separate set of reasons. The thing they have in common is purely method. The more you look at it, the more it becomes one kid who goes off the rails for his own reasons in a very particular family. As a fiction writer, it's much more interesting from that perspective than it is as part of a larger phenomenon. Once it's part of a larger phenomenon, you lose all the details that truly explain it.

But the one thing that I did feel was that what we had on our hands was a fad. One of the main problems was imitation. What we've now achieved, if you can say that, is that the school shooting has joined the vocabulary of the junior high and high school adolescent. So when they're upset, or unable to imagine their future, or the only woman they'll ever love has turned them down, one of the things that might occur to them is to shoot up the school. Before, that didn't seem to be one of the options to express yourself. And now it is.

But with Kevin, it still seemed like he was just a sociopath. Kevin wasn't upset about a girl. He hated life. He didn't need any inspiration.

But that was meant to come from a very particular place. There was a point at which I banned myself from reading any more about school shootings. Since I'd concluded that every situation was different, there was no substitute for making up my own.

It's a single, particular story which I tried to make credible and in which the mother certainly is implicated. I don't believe it's totally her fault.

You believe that the mother had something to do with how awful her son is?

Look, Kevin may have been a difficult child, but she didn't improve matters. I don't mean to let her off the hook. She did help to make him. This isn't meant to be a cut-and-dried nature/nurture debate, because I don't believe there's an easy answer to that.

But, yes, Eva is partly at fault. And she's supposed to recognize that. She did help to create a monster.

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