As the narrator of The Dinner by Herman Koch starts out his tale of going to dinner with his wife and brother and sister-in-law, you feel sorry for him. His brother is one of those people who is a celebrity and uses it to his advantage, turning every interaction into a farcical scene in which you are an unwilling participant. You understand why he rejected his brother’s offer to meet at an “ordinary cafe” before diner and instead go straight to dinner.
You feel his frustration with and disgust of his brother who hasn’t bothered to show up yet half an hour after the reservation, giggling along with them as he bets his wife that even going to the restaurant that late, Serge still wouldn’t be there. You feel for him as the hostess doesn’t treat him with respect when he claims to be with the Lohman reservation, feeling that same sighing as he explains that he’s Serge’s brother.
It’s shortly after this that you stop feeling for him. It turns out that the dinner has been requested by Serge so that the two couples can talk about their children and an issue concerning them. As the book heads from the aperitif to the digestif, you start to distance yourself from the characters one by one. Babette, Serge’s wife, and Claire, the narrator’s wife, retain your sympathy the longest, but even they reveal themselves to completely lack and moral compass, this disparity between your initial reaction making them all the more contemptible.
For all that I disliked the characters, and I know I was supposed to, I didn’t necessarily completely dislike the book itself. Many of the observations about the stilted meal in the upscale Dutch restaurant resonated with me and had me smiling in sympathy. The scenes written were vividly drawn in my imagination, as much as I was disgusted by the story behind them. While the action of the book took place during the dinner, there were flashbacks throughout that clarified much more of the story and its background.
I walked away from the book feeling somewhat dirty. This isn’t a pleasant book, but that isn’t the intent at all. I was fascinated by the characters, much as I would be by a horrific train wreck, certain that I didn’t just read what I thought I did.
It’s all couched in love of family and maintaining happiness, with the question around how far you would go for your own children. The premise, of course, is that the more you protect your child, the more you must love him. I personally disagree with that, as I am far more in favor of learning personal responsibility and accountability that is needed in the long run. For this and for so many reasons, this book isn’t for everyone. I’m glad I read it, even as I was repulsed by the characters and felt icky when I finished it. That doesn’t make it a bad book in my mind, though I definitely have to be in the right frame of mind to read it.
Written by Michelle who hopes never to discover a secret about her children the way the Lohmans did. See how she parents in the hopes to prevent this on her blog Honest & Truly! and follow along with her on Twitter where she is also @HonestAndTruly. She also wrote a post inspired by the book about her ordering philosophy in a restaurant as part of the From Left to Write book club.