The Dinner (Herman Koch)

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

Defending Jacob (William Landay)

Defending Jacob has had outstanding word-of-mouth reviews, so I wanted to see what all the buzz was about. You may have heard that there is a shocking twist at the end. Well, thinking that I was all high and mighty, I haughtily had the twist figured out…until I didn’t. Believe me, you won’t see this one coming.

Andy Barber is an assistant district attorney in an idyllic wealthy suburb of Boston. He lives there with his wife, Laurie, and their 14-year-old son, Jacob. Everything is perfect until one day, a classmate of Jacob’s is brutally murdered in a park. Andy quickly gets on the case but is taken off when the evidence points to his son as the prime suspect.

Legal thrillers are a dime a dozen, with John Grisham and Scott Turow being the most famous authors. However, Landay is a master at them, moving all the pieces around like one giant puzzle until everything seems to solve itself. Or so the reader thinks.

Lucky (or not so lucky) for us, Defending Jacob will be a movie soon. Do yourself a favor and read the book before you see it. Sometimes Hollywood messes up a book so badly that it’s a mere token of itself at the end.

MY RATING - 5