Book Review: The Dinner by Herman Koch

On a recent trip to Amsterdam I nipped into a bookshop and asked if they could recommend any good Dutch Crime fiction. After some discussion the three assistants agreed that  The Dinner was the best.
I'd already read We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver and had previously avoided The Dinner for it's similarity in subject matter but decided this time to give it a go.

From the above reference you'll have realised that both these books explore the theme of children from seemingly 'normal' backgrounds committing atrocious acts.

Herman Koch,
actor,and author

In Koch's The Dinner two cousins commit an act of violence which although recorded on CCTV they remain unidentified by all but their own parent and 'The Dinner' is the venue for the parents to discuss what they should do.
 Paul the father of the apparent ringleader, Michel is the narrator and during the course of the lengthy very posh dinner, the strained relations between him, his more successful brother Serge and their wives (Claire and Babette) are revealed through a series of his anecdotal thoughts and silent observations. Quickly we become aware of the edgy dynamics between the couples as we discover more about their lives.
It's not until half way through the book (and near the end of the  meal) that the subject of their fifteen year old sons violent act is broached and as expected each one of the quartet has an opinion and a motive to support their opinion about what they should do about their boys.

Amazon Kindle £2.99
PB £3.85

Personally, I felt that Koch, using Paul's unreliable narrative as a tool, guided the reader just a bit too neatly to assume that a combination of learned behaviour (as exampled by Paul's observations of incidents where he himself exhibited violent behavior before his son)  and  the unnamed 'condition' that Michel may have inherited from his father, were the reasons for his actions - a bit too cut and dry for me.

However, the second half of the book explores what the parents think should happen to the boys and explores just how far some parent's will go to protect their children, whilst others feel morally bound to report their children.

Amazon Kindle £4.12
           PB £5.59
              DVD £ 7.05

Lionel Shriver

I would certainly recommend this book, especially to Reading Groups where in depth discussion of the characters and their motives would be very interesting.  However I can't say I enjoyed it - some of the analogies were very long winded and I felt it was a bit contrived.  In comparison to Shriver's WeNeed To Talk About Kevin, The Dinner was less probing and a bit too simplistically portrayed.

With such an emotive subject it was quite ambitious for Koch to explore  the reasons for their behaviour as well as posing the question "What would you do if your child had committed such an act and you had to decide on their fate?"


Released July 2014  Summer house with Swimming Pool  by Herman Koch