Sunday, March 17, 2013

Herman Koch, The Dinner ****

The narrator of The Dinner starts out as a pleasantly cranky complainer with little patience for social conventions and jealousy of his politician brother. There's something going on with his 15-year-old son, that's clear from the beginning, but Paul is more concerned about making it through dinner without snapping at his brother's annoying habits.

As the story progresses, we learn more about the son's issue and about Paul's unusual personality. We're treated to interesting discussions about racism in film and the number of assholes killed during the Second World War. In other words, things escalate in a deliciously misanthropic fashion. I would have handled things a bit differently in the closing pages (I disagree with Paul's assessment at the end of Chapter 43), but the overall effect is solid.

The recommendation on the back cover from Gillian Flynn is fitting, because like Gone Girl, The Dinner surprises the reader with the full extent of the narrator's nastiness.

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