Review: The Dinner by Herman Koch.

Book: The Dinner

Author: Herman Koch

Translated By: Sam Garrett.

Pages: 311

Read On: Paperback

How Long It Took Me To Read: 2 days

Plot Summary: A summer's evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between mouthfuls of food and over the delicate scraping of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of politeness - the banality of work, the triviality of holidays. But the empty words hide a terrible conflict and, with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened... Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. Together, the boys have committed a horrifying act, caught on camera, and their grainy images have been beamed into living rooms across the nation; despite a police manhunt, the boys remain unidentified - by everyone except their parents. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children and, as civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

General Thoughts: I had been hearing about this book for absolute ages! I kept seeing it everywhere and it sounded really interesting and I was curious about this book for a fair while before I got my hands on it.

Things I Liked: 

1. I liked the idea of this book, two couples sit down for a tense dinner and discuss a very uncomfortable issue. The idea of a civil evening that is trying to come to terms with a terrible thing was an interesting thing to read about.

2. The books flits between the present day dinner and events of the past, I really enjoy this sort of thing.

3. As the evening progresses we delve further and further into the issue on hand and things begin to feel more and more awkward. You, as reader, feel this unease, this discomfort and his mounting awkwardness as we go from course to course.

4. The terrible thing that has happened is kept a secret till pretty much the middle of the book. I was just glad that I didn't have to wait till the very end to find out!

5. The writing was nice too.

6. This book makes you think...think about right and wrong and what you would do, could do to protect the ones you love. I like books that make you think.

Things I Didn't Like: 

1. None of the people in this book were likable. Not one! They were all pretty stinking vile!

2. At some level, I find it highly odd that you would sit down and have dinner in a posh restaurant when you have something so terrible and sad to discuss. Call me crazy but I wouldn't want to be in public and have that conversation! Especially since one of the people present is a public figure, a politician who draws a fair amount of attention to himself, Also, they go through a few courses of their dinner before bringing up the topic of the moment. Slightly hard to believe!

3. *SLIGHTLY SPOILERY* The book tries to do this thing where you are meant to side with one person and think they are right and the other party is in the wrong. But I sorta didn't fall for it! I just didn't like our main character, the person whose perspective we see the book through and somewhere in the middle I just began to doubt him and his words.

4. The two couples in this book are related, as in two brothers and their wives. I don't know why this fact was not mentioned in the blurb? I thought they are just friends and not related.

5. The horrible thing is pretty horrible! And any person, parent of otherwise would help cover it up and get away with it made me really uncomfortable and mad.

Rating: 3/5