July: Lionel Shriver

For July, we'll be reading Lionel Shriver! Has anyone read any of Ms. Shriver's works before? If so, what did you think?

And, what do you plan on reading for July?

A while back I read We Need to Talk about Kevin and thought it was a great, interesting, thought-provoking read. I was skeptical going into it but really ended up enjoying it, if you can use "enjoy" and We Need to Talk about Kevin in the same sentence.

Up for next is The Post-Birthday World, which sounds like it will be equally engrossing.

I have not read "Kevin," so that's on my list.

I have been very impressed by the two Lionel Shriver novels I have read. I read We Need to Talk About Kevin years ago and do not remember much about it, but I did enjoy it. I haven't seen the movie yet. But the movie freaked out by best friend so much she said she wasn't interested in reading the book. I read The Post-Birthday World a couple months ago and absolutely loved it. It had me crying my eyes out which is very rare for a book to do. And I have still been thinking about it since I read it back in March. The Post-Birthday World might become one of my all-time favorite books. I don't know if I will be in the mood to read any more Shriver in July since I still feel sort of hung-over from The Post-Birthday World, but we'll see.

I tried over and over again to get into We Need to Talk About Kevin but kept giving up. At the insistence of a friend (and I do mean insistence), I finally plugged away and finished... and was blown away by how awesome it was. So glad I listened to her.

I have another one of hers on a shelf somewhere so if I have time, I will try to join in.

>4 Tara1Reads: That brings up an interesting question ... anyone here watch the movie version of We Need to Talk about Kevin? I loved the book, but I feel like the movie would lose too much of what was going on inside the protagonist's head, which was probably the most compelling part of the book!

The movie was good. It was the same storyline but since the book was written in such a unique way, the movie was good in a different sort of way (if that makes sense). I wasn't disappointed like I general am after watching a movie adaption of an awesome book if that helps!

>7 Yells: Hmm, okay, good to know! :)

I quite adored The Post-Birthday World. Remarkably well thought-out, in my opinion.

P.S. Can't bring myself to read We Need to Talk About Kevin, in part because I read Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes. That theme is not one I feel like I need to revisit, fictionally speaking.

>6 sweetiegherkin: I watched the movie. Can't compare to the book but I'd find it hard to believe much was lost. It was very dark and depressing and, accordingly, did quite a good job at conveying the complexity of that kind of situation. It was difficult to watch, but an important topic, very worthwhile. You should certainly give it a watch and report back on your thoughts.

>9 amysisson: I agree. I think a lot of newer books like Fates and Furies and Maybe in Another Life are the same thing that Lionel Shriver did years before in The Post-Birthday World, but her book hasn't gotten nearly the attention these two newer books have, and The Post-Birthday World definitely deserves more attention.

>6 sweetiegherkin: >7 Yells: and >11 .Monkey.: Regarding the We Need to Talk About Kevin movie, I will move it up in my Netflix queue to watch it soon. I won't be able to compare it to the book though because it's been so long since I read the book.

Tilda Swinton is really amazing, she did an incredible job in a very difficult role.

I have read We Need to Talk About Kevin. Very very good.

Not sure what else to try by Shriver (if I get a chance... July might be a bit too soon!). I'll read through the rest of the posts to see what is recommended.

>6 sweetiegherkin: I thought the movie was... odd. The book was very very good, I thought, but I wasn't a fan of the movie.

For my current audiobook read, I started Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult - being another book about a school shooting and one that looks at the mothers of the children involved, I'm of course reminded of We Need to Talk about Kevin. I'll wait until I'm done with this one to make any judgment calls on which was better...

I have a couple books I'm trying to finish up in the first half of July, but in the second half, I'll be reading Big Brother.

I'm a fan of Lionel Shriver. I've previously read We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Post-Birthday World, and Game Control. One of the things I liked about all of her books was how they stuck with me. Even Game Control, which I liked the least, made me think and stayed in my head for days after finishing.

>12 Tara1Reads: I completely agree -- why the short shrift to The Post-Birthday World?

Ach! It is July already, isn't it. Been so much buzz about The Post-Birthday World that I think maybe I should read that one instead of We Need to Talk About Kevin. Thoughts? Quick, before I get the book!

I liked them both! I think you can't go wrong. Kevin is definitely much darker.

I see she wrote a dystopian, The a mandibles. I may try that.

>20 nohrt4me2: I'm halfway through The Mandibles and am really enjoying it! Based on what I've read so far, I would certainly recommend it, but I can understand if all the finance talk is off-putting to some people. I just picked it up a few days go and have a hard time putting it down, a sure sign of a good book! The Mandibles is the first book by Lionel Shriver I've read; I can't help but feel I've missed out by not reading anything of hers sooner.

Am about 1/3 through Big Brother and it's pretty good. I haven't read anything of here in ages. I might revisit Female of the Species again since I have it.

>10 amysisson: Can't bring myself to read We Need to Talk About Kevin, in part because I read Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes.

I haven't read the Picoult, but just because both books feature a school shooting, it doesn't follow that they are similar. We Need To Talk About Kevin is chiefly about a woman and her relationships with her husband, son, and to a lesser extent, her daughter. It's really about motherhood.

I saw the movie after reading the book and wasn't too keen on it, although I thought Tilda Swinton was fabulous.

I have So Much for That buried in my TBR pile so I'll see if I can dig it out this month.

OK, not too far into We Need to Talk About Kevin, and I'm finding it v-e-r-y slow going; the degree to which the mother/narrator she is trying to go back to the beginning and examine why she wanted to have a child in the first place gets a little tedious, though my sense is that this is how it might be for someone in her situation. Moreover, memory and the human ability to rationalize being what they are, I'm starting to think that this woman might think she's being ruthlessly honest while deluding herself.

One of the questions the book raises is why do people have children at all? And how much are women allowed to admit, at least some days even if only to themselves, that they wish they'd never had children, especially their specific children?

The narrator clearly enjoys being punished (or being seen to be punished, hmm). Parallels with the legend of the sin-eater in those dozen eggs that are broken are palpable.

Is the author trying to punish the narrator for having children? Perhaps all will be come clear in time, though if the narration doesn't shift to somebody with a more omniscient POV, my guess is that nothing really gets cleared up.

I am thinking of reading Sue Klebold's A Mother's Reckoning after this one.

If I can stand it.

Quick UPDATE: Getting further in now. I'm wondering if anyone else feels that Eva's self-absorption, her hatred of the way her body is changing during pregnancy, her bratty whims--she doesn't really care if her child takes her last name; she just wants to pick fights with her husband--suggests that she has some sociopathic tendencies. Maybe? Her husband is dim (but aren't they all?)Is Shriver trying to be ambiguous about all this (at least so far) in order to underscore that perhaps there are no real answers.

Another UPDATE: OK, now about two-thirds done with Eva and Kevin, and have decided to view this book as a domestic thriller, a horror novel. I'm enjoying it a lot more this way than seeing it as "serious literature." Shriver is, like those old domestic thriller writers in the 1950s, using a crime as the pivot point around which Eva can make observations about family life and explore the ambivalence most women have about parenthood.

I also think Shriver is saying some things about the nature of evil and how people respond to it. Really interesting riff on Kevin's inability to experience joy and how a lot of his torture of other people hinges in robbing them of joy and making them feel shame. It's what evil does in the Garden of Eden.

Final UPDATE: OK, done now, and I think the book ultimately concludes that there's no point in talking about Kevin and no explaining him. It's not the cynical refrigerator mother, the overly enthusiastic father, the school bullies, poverty, Prozac, or trauma that makes Kevin awful. Kevin is a cipher. He is Iago. And he doesn't have much more to say for himself than Iago.

The book is really not about Kevin, but about what it might be like to be the mother of Kevin. It is a reflection of every woman's worst fears, that she is a terrible mother (and will be put on trial for it) and that her offspring will turn out to be the worst type of person.

Bottom line, this book is like repeatedly diving deep into a very murky pond and coming up with nothing much more than The Bad Seed.

I do like Shriver's writing style and would try The Mandibles.

I read The Post-Birthday World recently and found it to be well written and thought out. I thought she did a good job with character development and a storyline that kept my interest. Her writing style is very dense such that every sentence is meaningful and well written.

I didn't particularly buy the story of the main character giving up her comfortable life to fall for someone who wasn't her equal just because there was so much passion in their relationship.

I will give another one of her books a try and hopefully will enjoy it a bit more.

I read Big Brother and it was pretty engrossing. Not perfect. The set-up was so artificial that I wasn’t surprised at the ending. Also it was a bit preachy in the sense that Pandora was such a light sketch of a stand-in for Shriver herself that it was too obvious. Some of the smug tone was definitely from the position of a skinny person who has always been thin and has no fear of being anything else. Still, for all of that it had some interesting points to make about the diet industry and how fat people are perceived and treated despite there being so very many more of them. I’d read more from her.

Insofar as Kevin goes; I found Eva more sympathetic because I chose to be child-free and got rations of shit for it from almost everyone for over a decade. Those who have an inclination toward motherhood and thus fit the biggest acceptable role for women worldwide might have a hard time understanding the opposite choice and how difficult it is when people have no compunction about confronting you with it. It’s an accusation of a deep psychological anomaly if you’re a woman who doesn’ t want and doesn’t like children. Your life, your womanhood and basically your sanity is challenged and called into doubt. Many women fold in the face of it and become mothers when they’d rather not. If I had been one of them I have no doubt I’d feel resentment toward everyone who forced me into it; including, most likely, the child.

Also, I’m not a believer in nurture being the major or only driving force that shapes personality. I believe that genetics pretty much does it all and traits are only nuanced by environment. So the idea of a child by itself is pretty horrible to me, a defective one even more so and if that defect is sociopathy, narcissism or some other really heinous personality disorder, so much the worse. I totally understood her fear of Kevin and her horror as to having brought him forth against her will. That reaction probably didn’t help, but I don’t know what would have.

I just finished So Much For That and I have mixed feelings. I won't say much, as it looks like others may read it soon, but as much I enjoyed parts of it, I just couldn't really engage with any of the characters. And for a book about chronic illness, I didn't cry once (kind of a miracle considering all the things I do cry over).

>26 Bookmarque: Interesting take. I also just finished Big Brother and I found the set-up so artificial that it was harder for me to get into the story than any of her others that I've read. Sometimes things would happen -- capital of which is the siblings moving in together -- that I just couldn't believe and it jerked me out of the story. She always brought me back, but it was a tougher road than I expected. So, I also felt jerked out of the story by the "twist." And I completely agree with you about the narrator being a light sketch of Shriver herself.

All that said, I didn't dislike the book. There were so many tidbits of philosophy, not to mention that the way characters interact with each other (in this and all of her books) is so compelling and real to me. I would not recommend Big Brother over others of her books, but I still am glad I read it.

And regarding your thoughts and connection to Eva because of your experiences being childless, your words really spoke to me. I've had a lot of doubts over the years about wanting children (I hesitate to say "ambivalence" as that seems to imply I haven't thought about it at length) so I, like you, "got" Eva in a way that I think others might not.

My review is completed in comment #24.

>29 nohrt4me2: Interesting comments and thoughts re: We Need to Talk about Kevin. I was particularly struck by:

I'm wondering if anyone else feels that Eva's self-absorption, her hatred of the way her body is changing during pregnancy, her bratty whims--she doesn't really care if her child takes her last name; she just wants to pick fights with her husband--suggests that she has some sociopathic tendencies.

That thought hadn't even occurred to me when reading it. The nature vs. nurture argument does seem to be underlying so much of the book, and that's another interesting observation to add.

I so wanted to get to The Post-Birthday World this month but just couldn't fit it in with everything else going on. Had to return it to the library, too, but I'm hoping I can find some time in the near future to check it out again.

>30 sweetiegherkin: I don't know what Shriver intended, but she has said she is interested in hard-to-love characters. Eva strikes me as one of those certainly.

If some books are meant to show how "good" people fall short if the mark of perfection, maybe "Kevin" shows how a merely "bad" person stacks up against pure evil.

Eva is nowhere near the monster Kevin is.

In an allegorical read, Kevin could be Eva's fears about her own inadequacies as a person, especially as a potential parent. Perhaps Kevin is merely the nightmare child that Eva fears she will produce and be completely incapable of handling.

There is mental illness in Eva's family. I think for many of us with a fraught genetic cocktail, the primal fear is producing something like Kevin and being totally unable to offset nature with nurture.

I really had a strong visceral response to a straight-up reading of this book, and I keep attempting to find some way to read it in some more distanced way.

>32 nohrt4me2: In an allegorical read, Kevin could be Eva's fears about her own inadequacies as a person, especially as a potential parent. Perhaps Kevin is merely the nightmare child that Eva fears she will produce and be completely incapable of handling.

Hadn't thought of that. Very interesting.

I actually related to Eva a lot. Our culture and society puts a lot of pressure on mothers.

>33 Nickelini: Yes, I agree. Our culture is whacko about motherhood.

Eva seems pressured mostly by her husband. I am more than happy to accept that men are really stupid and clueless, but Eva's husband went beyond what was believable even for me.

So another allegorical read is that the husband represents the way we romanticize motherhood and children.

When Eva spectacularly breaks Kevin's arm, she is rebelling against those pressures and attitudes.

>34 nohrt4me2: -- I agree about the husband. He didn't have a single redeeming quality, in my book. Which made him unbelievable. More nuance was needed there.

>33 Nickelini:, 34 I felt a lot of connection with Eva and took her word as truth. Probably in part because I listened to the audiobook so it felt like i was hearing directly from her...

I'd be interested in where others might have felt a connection with Eva, specifically.

It's been too long since I read it to remember whether or not I felt a "connection" to Eva, but I don't remember disliking her as people seem to. But then, I don't want kids, so maybe that's why?

>35 Nickelini:

i should say that i have neither read the book nor seen the movie, but i've been reading this with interest. i wonder if the husband had nothing redeeming about him, if maybe shriver was saying something about blaming him for how kevin turned out? i've read a lot about blaming eva but does he have some blame as well?

>39 overlycriticalelisa: It's been a while since I read it, but I think with the whole book coming from Eva's perspective that colors a lot. She seems to blame herself at times, but at other times she seems upset that no one - including her husband - could see what she saw in Kevin, i.e., that he was showing sociopathic tendencies even at a very young age. I don't know how other people felt, but I certainly felt frustrated by how oblivious her husband was to what was going on around him. I'm not sure I'd throw the word "blame" around -- I thought a large part of the book was about we as a society are quick to judge the parents of school shooters, but sometimes the circumstances are more extenuating than simple bad or even just plain oblivious parenting.

I understand people who don't want children. I'm not sure why they would identify with Eva, who has Kevin on a whim and then hates the whole idea almost immediately. Then she has her daughter--she tricks her husband so she can get pregnant--mostly to test whether she's a crappy mother overall or just with Kevin. That's hard for me to understand or sympathize with.

We only get Eva's take on her husband, and it's hard to know how dumb he really is. She's telling the story. She clearly resents what she sees as his blind spots about Kevin.

The wrangle over who was right about Kevin struck me as the one realistic note in the book. It is often the case that one parent will pick up on a problem with a kid that is magnified by the other parent's insistence it doesn't exist.

>39 overlycriticalelisa: What others have said and also, he was always excusing Kevin or telling her that she was imagining things. It's been a while since I read it though.

>41 nohrt4me2: I understand people who don't want children. I'm not sure why they would identify with Eva, who has Kevin on a whim and then hates the whole idea almost immediately.

She caved to cultural and husband pressure. Happens all the time.

>41 nohrt4me2:, >42 Nickelini: Seconding Nickelini's sentiments. It's not Eva's every step-by-step that is identifiable, but the struggle she relates. There's an expectation that if you are a woman, you must want to have children. If you don't, that's only because something is "wrong" with you. For Eva, those kinds of cultural expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy as she heaps blame on herself --- there must be something wrong with her because she didn't want children and now that her son has done something evil, here's her proof that there is something wrong with her ... in her mind anyway.

Right on sweetiegherkin. I've had people ask me what's wrong with me to my face when I said I didn't like or want kids. People have called me selfish, told me in the most patronizing way possible that I was too young to know this about myself and that I'd change my mind. All kinds of crap like that. It's a given that a woman is defective if she doesn't want motherhood and I can really understand Eva's reaction to Kevin's psychosis; blaming herself.

Women have a perfect right to arrange their lives as they wish. I'm sorry BookMarque has been besieged by a-holes for not having children.

But that isn't Eva's problem. Eva is a very independent person with her own very successful business. Her extended family and friends are putting her under no pressure to have children. Her husband and she have discussed children, but when Kevin is conceived, he isn't bugging her about it. She's the one who decides to take the plunge on a whim.

So I just don't buy these inchoate "pressures" Eva feels that explain why people relate to her.

I just don't see her as a victim of anything other than her own lack of self-knowledge.

What bothers me about the book is that it COULD be read as a cautionary tale that is, IMO, very anti-woman: Eva is punished for having children when she knows she doesn't want them and would make a terrible mother by giving birth to Hell Boy.

Of course, the husband is punished for ignoring Kevin's sociopathic tendencies too ...

>45 nohrt4me2: Ok. I disagree with you, but it's been too long since I've read the book to discuss further. If you can even call this a discussion. I'm out.

>45 nohrt4me2: I think you are seriously underestimating what societal pressure is like. You're "sorry BookMarque has been besieged by a-holes" but you do not seem to be realizing this is something every woman who chooses not to have children, deals with. All of society says women are to be babymakers, that is their role to fill. No one single person has to sit there and scold a character in a story in order for her to be dealing with these pressures.

>41 nohrt4me2: I had forgotten about the daughter.

>44 Bookmarque: Wow! Luckily, I have not had people question my decision to not have kids (at least not for a very long time - I'm now 43... I knew when I was 15 that I didn't want kids). Maybe because I've always been very open and honest about not liking kids much, so why would anyone expect I would want to have one of my own. I don't know. That's totally a guess.

The motherhood issue is obviously a very touchy issue; as a general reminder, please let us all be civil to one another.

>44 Bookmarque:, >45 nohrt4me2:, >47 .Monkey.:, >50 LibraryCin: It's been a while since I read the book, but I recall Eva talking about feeling a lot of pressures to have a child because it's what was expected of her. But again, it's been some time so I could be remembering incorrectly.

On a personal note though, I would definitely say there's a lot of presumptuousness from people in general expecting women to want children. Sometimes it's perhaps well-meaning or simply thoughtless, like people sort of tut-tutting and saying "well, there's plenty of time for you" when you say you don't have any kids. I don't think I've ever had anyone be quite as rude to me as they have been to BookMarque. On the other hand, I once had a person say to me "Well, if everyone thought like you, the human species would stop existing." That's nice, but I didn't say everyone had to think like me, just that those were my feelings. Once at a baby shower, a woman asked me if I had any kids and when I responded with a polite 'no, I don't,' she turned her back to me and refused to speak to me for the remaining hours of the baby shower. Ironically at the time I worked in early childhood education and care (and had been for over a decade), so I had probably more to say on the topic of infants and toddlers than this woman who had two full-grown children. But I guess in her mind, I had absolutely nothing to contribute and wasn't worth speaking to...

How lucky, LibraryCin, that you haven't had many people questioning your decisions like that. Perhaps some of it is cultural and certain countries or areas of a country see this more than others? Or maybe you just have more tactful people in your life. :)

>49 LibraryCin: I had forgotten about the daughter too! I guess that why the book is about Kevin, not her. Can anyone who read the book more recently fill in some of the gaps on the daughter? Is she living with the father at the end of the book or Eva?

>51 sweetiegherkin: Is she living with the father at the end of the book or Eva?

Kevin has killed the father by the end of the book, and if I remember correctly, the daughter too. . Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

>52 Nickelini: Wow, I did not remember any of that at all!! Geez, I guess only the beginning half of the book really stuck with me.

>52 Nickelini: Yep, you are right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Need_to_Talk_About_Kevin#Plot

"The motherhood issue is obviously a very touchy issue; as a general reminder, please let us all be civil to one another."

I am sorry if what I said riled people up, but I do believe some posters are reading some kind of implied criticism of their experiences into my criticism/puzzlement over their sympathy with Eva.

I have deleted my personal story above because I felt pressured to "prove" that I am a real woman who has made hard choices about reproduction and motherhood.

This is not the first time other LT women have jumped all over my ass about what I don't understand about being a woman. Sorry, but by my reckoning, I've been one 20 or 30 years longer than many women here.

So offa this thread and LT in general to think about whether putting up with those who are quick to feel personally attacked by my personal opinions about a damn book is worth the aggravation.

Nice flounce.

>51 sweetiegherkin: "Well, if everyone thought like you, the human species would stop existing."

Ha! And my thought to that would be something along the lines of that being better for our planet, anyway! Humans are so overpopulated... What bugs me so much about us ruining our planet, is that we are taking all the other critters with us. :-( I'm also amongst a minority who wonder why humans are always so much more important than other animals.

And wow, someone refused to talk to you. Wonder what she would have said/done had I also said that I don't want any (I usually do tell people).

The only reason I can think for people to not question me is that I make it clear that I not only don't want kids, but I don't really like them, either. I suppose, given that, people don't assume I'll change my mind? I'm not sure. (As you can see from above, I certainly don't keep it a secret!)

I hope no one is offended by my comments. They are simply my own opinions and feelings. I don't mean to upset anyone.

>55 nohrt4me2: Please note that my call for civility was directed to everyone, not to any one person in particular. We've delved into a rather personal topic here, so I would like to remind everyone to be respectful of others' opinions and choices. I'm sorry if you felt pressured into anything. I think in general there is a problem when we try to lump the experiences of all woman - billions of people worldwide - into the same cookie cutter mold. Not just a LT problem -- a problem in many respects.

>57 LibraryCin: And my thought to that would be something along the lines of that being better for our planet, anyway!
Sort of my opinion also, but I wasn't even going to go there. My bigger issue at that moment was the thought that because I said I don't want to have children, that was somehow extrapolated to mean I was criticizing other people for choosing to have them, which is not at all how I feel.

The only reason I can think for people to not question me is that I make it clear that I not only don't want kids, but I don't really like them, either.
I think that might be part of the problem of why I get questioned about this particular life choice so much -- because I do like children and I've had several jobs that involve working with them. Somehow people can't wrap their heads around how a person could generally like children but not want to be responsible for caring for one (or more) 24/7.

>59 sweetiegherkin: My bigger issue at that moment was the thought that because I said I don't want to have children, that was somehow extrapolated to mean I was criticizing other people for choosing to have them, which is not at all how I feel.

And that's why I apologized in my next post, as I don't mean to make it sound that way, either!

>60 LibraryCin: Yes, online particularly it is difficult to ascertain tone, so it's hard to know what people mean sometimes. I usually try to err on the side of assuming people meant well. :)

>51 sweetiegherkin: / >52 Nickelini: Yeah, that's how the movie was and I figured such a huge thing as that they probably didn't change. That angle of it was awful, maybe seeing it play out visually made more of an impact, but that was one of the things that stood out most to me, the degree of ...cruelty? rage? I don't even know what, that it took for him to have done that, and then also left Eva be. Just really awful.

For me, the takeaway from this book is that kids like Kevin can happen to anyone. This particular mom is so helpless in the face of all of it, as Monkey says, the cruelty and rage. What mom could possibly comprehend that in their child? Eva made some mistakes but even if she had done everything right, the child would still be that way, but maybe she would blame herself a little less? I feel like he could have killed her too, but chose not to as the culmination of his plan to torture her - leaving her to live with the things he'd done and feeling responsible for him for the rest of her life.

Then again, like LibraryCin, I am 43 and childless-by-choice so maybe I don't know what it is like for a parent to read/watch something like this...

I feel like he could have killed her too, but chose not to as the culmination of his plan to torture her - leaving her to live with the things he'd done and feeling responsible for him for the rest of her life.

Yeah, exactly, that's part of what I mean by that overwhelming degree of, whatever you'd even call that. The fact that he intentionally did nothing to her ...aside of making her live with it all. Super heavy.

>63 Darth-Heather: For me, the takeaway from this book is that kids like Kevin can happen to anyone.

That's a fair point, especially since the book seems to touch a bunch on the nature vs. nurture debate.

I chose to read Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin for my make-up read for July. This one won the Orange Prize in 2005 & deservedly so!

My thoughts & comments:

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver; (5*)

We Need to Talk About Kevin was a five star read for me. I think it was written brilliantly. I've had many a movie have me on the edge of my seat but this is the first book I can recall putting me literally on the edge of my seat and holding my breath even though I had figured it out a few pages in, with the exception of the daughter.

BRILLIANT, JUST BRILLIANT!~!

(I've not been able to write a review on it yet, but will throw one up soon. )