The past few years have
seen books trending towards the psychological
thriller. Some, such as William Landay’s
Defending Jacob and S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep are like giant
puzzles, just begging for the reader to put them together. Others, like Gillian Flynn’s phenomenally
successful Gone Girl, practically
make the reader feel queasy inside and want to take a shower at the end. Herman Koch’s international bestseller The Dinner is a hybrid of the two
styles.
We start off with Paul and
Claire, a husband and wife, getting ready for to go to an exorbitantly expensive
restaurant with Paul’s brother and sister-in-law, Serge and Babette. As Paul is the narrator (and he becomes an
increasingly unreliable one at that as The
Dinner progresses), we quickly learn that he does not want to go, but we're left to think that it’s because he does not get along with
Serge. Before they leave, Paul goes to his
son’s (Michel’s) room to search for something on Michel’s cell phone. We know that Paul found what he was
looking for but do not quite know what that is until the real reason for the
dinner becomes horrifyingly clear.
Koch wisely fills the book
with minutiae that lulls the reader almost into a false sense of complacency. He describes the food ad nauseam, brilliantly
naming each section after the dinner courses.
Then, without warning, Koch pulls the rug out from under us; the serene
meal descriptions stop so he can get into the real “meat” of the story, and we
are reminded that, unfortunately, things are rarely what they seem.
MY RATING - 4
