One of the few thrillers I've read. It was interesting start to finish, but not very special. ( )

Well, there is certainly a lot to talk about in this book: family relationships, pretentious fine dining, hazards of keeping secrets, the state of education, homeless people, casual violence, abortion, the death penalty...the list goes on. Unfortunately, not a bit of it is pleasant to think about and it certainly isn't pleasant to read about. I think I have reached my saturation point on books about awful people behaving in awful ways.

I knew this was a dark book when I picked it up. I've seen it compared to Gone Girl (a book I hated myself for loving) but this was more like a boring story about scary people. The kind of scary people that could be hiding in plain sight at the table next to you at a restaurant. I'm afraid that there are more people in the world like these creeps than I care to imagine but the events of today's world make it seem likely.

For pleasure reading, I can't recommend this. For a book to prompt discussion, it will be excellent.

( )

Seems like there's not a lot of middle ground in opinions of this book. It's ridiculous to think a family would meet in public to discuss what these people need to discuss. That being said, I liked the way the characters spooled out over the course of the dinner. But really they are all so nasty it's hard to care what happens to them. I haven't disliked characters so much since The Ginger Man. And like that book I'm taking this one to Half Price just to get it out of my house. ( )

This one is a rather disturbing book.



Told from the first person perspective of one Paul Lohman, it is a story of a dinner event that he goes to with his wife, his brother and brother's wife. What starts as his monologue on petty habits and political standpoints of middle class (using his brother as a target) quickly escalates into something much much darker.

Paul's opinion on his brother, professional politician, and his view of his actions as simple PR acts soon transform into general aggressive stance to everything and anyone that Paul does not like. He is not above physical violence against anybody. when confronted with opposition of any kind he just ... snaps. Paul's monologue soon becomes more and more about his righteousness and high moral ground, high above everyone else. This escalation of violence that we begin to witness in Paul's story quickly gets replaced by vicious and completely psychopathic actions of his son and wife. In my opinion, especially his wife considering she was shown as a reasonable person through almost 3/4 of a book.

Very, very dark story that shows that you cannot ever truly know anyone, even your own child, spouse or sibling.



Recommended for all fans of thrillers but keep in mind that most probably you wont like any of the characters in the book. ( )

Too quirky for me--and, the nail in the coffin--I didn't care about any of the characters. ( )

The narrator and his wife are meeting another couple in an exclusive, trendy restaurant that the narrator doesn't want to eat in, but the other couple chose it. He doesn't like anything about the restaurant, seeing it as snobbish and expensive. He also doesn't like the man of the other couple, who is stupid and snobbish. This turns out to be his brother. As the night wears on, the reader is given more and more reason to dislike our unreliable narrator, but we discover that the two couples have a very important matter to discuss over dinner, one that involves the future of both their families.
Taught and intense, these four diners should have been kicked out of the restaurant by the time the main course arrived. ( )

3.75/5 I can't recall a time where I finished a book in which I disliked all of the characters, especially the 1st-person unreliable narrator. The slow burner of a story at the beginning but then a rapid pick-up and unbelievable plot twist towards the end, kept me turning those pages. I got off the rollercoaster ride feeling unnerved, voyeuristic, and nauseous. It's a pick because I'll be wondering about this one (especially the ending) for a while. ( )

We are presently in a time where various and many evils are being perpetrated, and perhaps this wasn’t the right time to read this book, but once I’d opened to the first page I could not stop.
It’s a book of families, of genetic backgrounds, of secrets. But what makes it exemplary is the way it grabs you right round the throat and pulls you in, keeps you from looking away as the horrors multiply.
The narrator, Paul, takes us along on a tense evening spent with his twin brother and their wives. Paul’s brother, Serge, is a popular politician, contemplating a run for the leadership. Paul has been off on leave from his job as a history teacher. There’s bad blood, envy, between them. So far, so usual. But in the background there’s the hint of malevolence left uncontrolled. Both twins have 15 year old sons, and those boys have been up to something.
What that is comes to light over dinner, a ridiculously expensive and expansively detailed dinner at one of those restaurants where you are supposed to be pleased to receive two squares of ravioli for your $50, the sort of place where only the very special can get a table last minute, where Serge eats often.
I am still talking like the narrator, Paul, which is not a good thing because his bottled rage is not a good way to feel. He’s an indelible character, though, and I know he will be inhabiting my mind for rather too long in this, the summer of our discontent.
The writing is tight, even the lengthy descriptions of the waiter’s pinky finger seem necessary and work towards creating tension. Melting ice cream keeps the time.
It’s this sort of writing that makes me want to put my head down and weep over my own much inferior scribbling. And then to look over Koch’s work to see how he does it, how he can take you on such a ride and have you both reeling in horror and nodding along with the families...
Stunning.
( )

All I can gauge from reading the reviews here is that 90% of people will say a book is poorly written and rate it 1 star is because "the characters are unlikable".
God forbid they stumble upon some gruesome crime fiction or something written from the perspective of an anatogonist. ( )

What is this supposed to be? Is it supposed to be relatable? Realistic? Is it supposed to make sense? Should I believe that three out of four parents would not care that their children are criminals? Should I believe that Paul has put multiple people in the hospital without consequences? I truly don't understand.

Two stars because at first the writing was compelling. ( )

In The Dinner, Herman Koch invites us to an excruciating dinner at an insufferable restaurant with four pretty repellent people discussing what they are going to do about a horrible crime that they are aware of.

There are some surprises along the way but, without giving away too much, Koch’s ending casts so much doubt on what went on before that you don’t know what to make of the book at all really. Personally, I found the ending bewildering and it ruined what little pleasure I found in the book. ( )

Original, dark, unreliable narrator . . .yeah, definitely up my alley! Unfortunately, I kept thinking to myself, "wow, this could have been brilliant." Honestly, the premise of the plot was just really good . . .but I couldn't help but think of it in the hands of say, Stephen King. King would make the rather pedestrian protagonist both more likable and scarier. He would take this exact same plot and take you on an emotional roller coaster.

Koch, on the other hand, takes his brilliant plot idea and overlays it with a solid storytelling voice and actually some sharp wit that keeps you turning the pages. And that was good enough for four stars from me. But just barely. I was interested and entertained, but not impressed.

The story is about two brothers who meet up in a restaurant with their wives. It becomes clear that the relationship between the brothers is strained and slowly the causes of the strain are revealed. Some of the issues are narrated forthrightly and others need to be unearthed a bit by the reader as the story progresses.

Readers can get behind characters who do bad things . . .but it takes a lot of writerly skill to develop the empathy in the heart of the reader that is sustained throughout. This book actually reminds me a little bit of a book I started and have yet to return to called [b:The Slap|5396496|The Slap|Christos Tsiolkas|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1330062364s/5396496.jpg|5464024] . . .which took on some similar issues on a smaller scale and with a less deft hand.

So I am glad I read this one, and I enjoyed the time I spent with it, but I don't think I'll be telling my friends to pick it up.

( )

Rather than the pretentious dinner described in The Dinner, I thought it was like eating bags of potato chips and being unable to stop. You don’t like the chips, but feel compelled to eat more.

What an unpleasant group. I don’t think you are meant to like anyone. The restaurant, the food, the manager are caricatures.

Good writing left me thinking. The kind of book where I’d think of re-reading to see what I had missed, but can’t imagine actually doing that. ( )

I was hesitating between four and five stars for quite some time. It ended up being five because, despite its flaws, which I won't go into as they'd be spoilers, it has some truly brilliant aspects which I will not forget in a hurry, and it conveys some brave and important messages. Also it was totally unputdownable and kept me up far too late, always the sign of a good story! ( )

Il n'y rien de plus trompeur que la couveture de ce livre ! ( )

I totally inflicted this on my book club, even though I was fully expecting to hate it. I thought the synopsis sounded interesting and I actually did want to read it but this is the sort of book I usually loathe . It turns out that I actually kind of liked it? Like is probably not the word I want, as I found the characters to be detestable (as they are supposed to be, I think) and I didn't actually enjoy reading about them or their horrible children but it didn't end where I expected, so that's a plus. I found the style a little difficult to follow, since Paul's recollections meander in and around the dinner itself, and I have lots of questions that are perfectly unanswerable, but overall, pretty good. Rating up a bit because whoa, that ending.

And not a bad start for the first written-by-a-dude book that I read this year. Hopefully the rest of my written-by-a-dude challenge will go as well. (I seem to read a lot of fiction by women, which is a good thing, but literally 99% of the books I've read in the last 2 years have been written by lady-identified people. Time to broaden the scope, as I find the reverse of that trend to be deplorable.) ( )

Prime Minister candidate Serge Lohman is a Dutch celebrity; a face everyone knows, and someone they can't please enough. His brother, Paul, is not nearly as successful, out of work for over a decade for reasons that aren’t clear until much later on (though no longer being a teacher doesn’t matter to him). Paul prides himself on his relationship with his son, Michel, and on being part of a loving family—a family about to be torn apart if he and his wife can’t stop it.

The high-end restaurant where this exchange takes place is a metaphor for the differences between the Lohman men. From the outset it’s clear that Paul is upset that Serge has secured last minute reservations at a place with a three month long waiting list (a place where Paul feels uncomfortable and out of his element). Things come to a simmer as Serge and Babette, his pretty wife, arrive and are greeted personally by the manager with whom Paul is quickly annoyed.

Prices, food, preparation, and presentation are ripped apart as polite conversation is exchanged, no one wanting to be the first to get to the heart of the matter.

The story unfolds slowly. Too slowly for my taste, really, but the foodie in me enjoyed the lingering courses (at first). The writing is top-notch. The Dinner is a Dutch translation, easy for this American gal to read along with despite the void in my Holland knowledge. The story, however, starts slow and then takes a bunch of illogical turns where Paul becomes the focus rather than the children, who are really what this book is supposed to be about; the thing two fifteen-year-old boys did. There’s a brief mention of blackmail, some weird segue about the narrator’s medical history (and I’m not sure what the author was getting at even with fifteen years medical experience under my belt). Maybe I’m just dense, but the talk of amniocentesis and terminating pregnancies for something psychiatric in nature makes me scratch my head.

The first half of the book brings to mind the American buzz term: “Affluenza.” These boys aren’t meant to be held accountable for their actions, at least not by all of the parents. There’s a sense of entitlement, that their lives are more valuable than others’. What the author did best is to showcase the depth of the characters’ depravity through past and current actions, introspection, and their opinions on the “issue.”

Does The Dinner pack the punch of Gone Girl? Not for me it didn’t, despite others drawing comparisons. The similarity for me ends at that the characters are pretty much all flaming a-holes. There is no one worth rooting for. It’s hard to identify with such an apathetic cast.

Still, The Dinner is like an impending car crash (one with a really, really long buildup, like if you were clairvoyant and saw a week into the future). You can’t help wanting to know what happened and what’s going to be done about it. I finished the book in three sittings. The prose kept me glued to the page, but the buildup falls flat on delivery. Three and a half stars. Great writing. So-so story with too many sidetracks, rife with implausibilities, and with a rushed ending that let me down.
( )

This book starts out innocuously enough. Narrator Paul Lohman, and his wife Claire, are meeting his brother and sister-in-law, Serge and Babette, for dinner at an upscale restaurant. Serge is a candidate for Prime Minister of the Netherlands in the upcoming election. The couples exchange pleasantries over dinner, but the reader gradually becomes aware of an underlying tension. We begin to understand that all is not as it seems.

The book is structured around the courses of the meal: aperitif, appetizer, main course, dessert, and digestif. The plot unravels slowly. The narrator is unreliable. The darkness of tone increases until the reader realizes the polite discussion and detailed descriptions of each course are concealing unsavory and disturbing secrets. This book is filled with unlikeable characters. The true extent and horrific nature of the one (or more) of the characters is not revealed until near the end.

I have tried to describe this book without spoilers, but it is difficult. I recommend going into it without knowing much about it. I am impressed by the author’s ability to tell a well-crafted and engrossing story. Koch is commenting on the way labels and abdication of responsibility have led to an acceptance of cruelty and violence.
( )

A little boring. Compared to Gone Girl??? Not sure...... it is a bookclub book picked by Christy for November 2016. ( )

The description made me want to read this book, but while the story held my interest I found it difficult to connect with any of the characters or empathize with any of their decisions. There was not so much a "tragedy" that any one was faced with nor did it make me wonder what I myself would do if faced with such an impossible "tragedy" The characters were too unreal. The plot was too implausible and the narrative too often stated "I'm not going to tell you" As in the wife is hospitalized but "I'm not going to tell you why" She had multiple surgeries but "I'm not going to tell you" what they were. One character has a mental illness of some sort but "I'm not going to tell you" what it is (since no such condition exists) oh and this illness could have been diagnosed before birth with an amnio but "I'm not going to tell you" This was less a story of how far you would go to protect those you love and more a story of how far you would dig yourself into a deeper hole along with someone who was never in a million years going to be able to get away with what they've done.



I received this book from Blogging for Books for review ( )

Ending is a bit dark and will make you think ( )

Got a free advance copy of this at a conference. Fast read, similar in tone to Gone Girl but not as good. ( )

This is a book about horrible people. I loved the first half, it kind of lost me in the 2nd half. Prepare to feel despair. ( )

Love me an edgy, quasi - literary thriller, and one featuring an unreliable narrator in an exotic locale is on paper a perfect book for me. This was a good intriguing read, though didn't feature any truly jaw dropping moments or quite pack the punch I was hoping for. ( )

Dark, twisted tale, with the ultimate unreliable narrator. Each time you think the story can't get any darker it does. Great short novel. ( )