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Loading... The Dinnerby Herman Koch
  
» 18 more Books Read in 2015 (203) Books Read in 2014 (482) Books Read in 2013 (793) Best family sagas (203) feasting on fiction (21) To Read (53) Boeken. (9) Fiction For Men (130) Dark Fiction (46) No current Talk conversations about this book.  lynnski723 | Dec 31, 2016 |  What a sneaky little book! Two brothers and their spouses meet up at a fancy restaurant for dinner. The narrator, Paul Lohman is a teacher currently on the non-active list, his brother Serge is in the running for the premiership of Holland. They couldn't be more different. As each course progresses the story tinkers with our perceptions of who the characters are why they are really meeting together at this moment in time. I enjoyed it immensely! (  ) Iambookish | Dec 14, 2016 | Great read. Love the way it unravels and reveals layers of the story and characters. ( ) cknick | Dec 14, 2016 | http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2735825.html This is a novel about an uncomfortable family meal in Amsterdam (which I read, with impeccable timing, immediately after a weekend in Amsterdam with my siblings and mother). Serge is in the running to be the next prime minister; Paul, the narrator, has become aware of a heinous crime that their sons committed; their wives Claire and Babette are in the conversation; the dinner is interrupted at various points in various ways; the technology of the mobile phone plays a key part in the narrative. It's intense and a bit unpleasant, but gripping reading. I often find unreliable narrators a bit annoying, but this one worked for me. ( ) nwhyte | Dec 11, 2016 | This book is deeply disturbing. Atrocious acts by teenage boys compel atrocious acts by their parents. No one in the book is likable. This book is worth the hype that it has generated. It resonates, if only that you feel you need to shower after having read it. ( ) Juliasb | Dec 1, 2016 |
 If you want to enjoy Herman Koch’s new novel, don’t read a single thing about it. To do so seriously reduces its power. Don’t read the blurbs on its dust jacket — an impressive list of authors that includes Gillian Flynn and S.J. Watson — nor the synopsis on the inside flap. Don’t even read this review. Actually, forget that — come back! It’s spoiler-free, I promise. . . . The Dinner is the kind of book I wish could be translated into English more often. The Dinner, a suspense novel by Herman Koch, has sold over a million copies since it was published in Europe in 2009, and it's not difficult to understand the appeal. It's fast-paced and riveting. Written in cool, detached prose (deftly translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett), The Dinner is as theatrical and dramatic as a well-crafted play. It's also nasty. It starts off as social satire but shifts gears, and you find yourself in the middle of a horror story. . . . Mr. Koch delivers his revelations cleverly, by the spoonful. Issues of morality, responsibility and punishment are raised along the way, and a Pinteresque menace lurks under the surface. When savagery takes over, the reader is shocked. But some of Mr. Koch's conclusions are a bit too pat. In the end, the book sits on the digestion less like an over-indulgent "fine dining" experience than Chinese food, which, as we all know, leaves you feeling hungry a couple of hours later.  “The Dinner,” Herman Koch’s internationally popular novel, is an extended stunt. Mr. Koch confines his story to one fraught restaurant meal, where malice, cruelty, craziness and a deeply European malaise are very much on the menu. "The Dinner” has been wishfully compared to Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” (and enthusiastically endorsed by Ms. Flynn) for its blackhearted deviltry. But her book, with its dueling narrators, had two vicious but sympathetic voices. Her sneaky spouses were delectable in their evil genius. The Lohmans are indigestible. “The Dinner,” Herman Koch’s internationally popular novel, is an extended stunt. Mr. Koch confines his story to one fraught restaurant meal, where malice, cruelty, craziness and a deeply European malaise are very much on the menu. The four diners can leave the table occasionally, headed to the restrooms or the garden or the handy room of flashback memories. But mostly they sit and seethe at one another as a miserable night unfolds. This book has been widely described as both thriller and chiller, but it really is neither. But it’s the morality of the story that’s really sickening.  Welsh is intrigued by a novel reminiscent of The Slap and Carnage
No descriptions found. Meeting at an Amsterdam restaurant for dinner, two couples move from small talk to the wrenching shared challenge of their teenage sons' act of violence that has triggered a police investigation and revealed the extent to which each family will go to protect those they love.… (more) |
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 Audible.comAn edition of this book was published by Audible.com.
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This is an odd book in that the first third I found very comical, the middle started to turn a little dark and made you consider your own personal values and morals, and then there is the last third of the book......it is completely dark and disturbing. You end up hating all the characters. There isn't one redeeming quality about any of them.
The novel takes place during a single evening, the majority of which is during dinner in a fancy restaurant. Granted, there are flashbacks thrown in there as well. Two brothers and their wives go to dinner and there is a huge "elephant in the room" regarding their sons recent actions. The police have a video, but only the family knows it's them. Should it remain that way? Once they decide to openly discuss it.....all hell breaks loose. The things these people say and do will shock you.
This is not a book for everyone because, as I said, parts are quite dark and disturbing. If you are OK with that, then give it a try.
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