During the course of the evening, it emerges that Paul and Claire’s son, Michel, has been involved in a serious crime with Rick, Serge and Babette’s son. While I had heard this novel was dark, I was unprepared for just how dark it got as events unfolded. Herman Koch, Photo Credit: Mark Kohn/Hollandse
Then, he pulls the rug out from under me. Koch lured me into believing I was reading a dark comedy. Flashbacks are interspersed in order to gain better insight into our narrator and the reason for this get-together. The structure of the book itself is even split into chapters named after dinner courses, with the majority of the action taking place during the main course. The humor contained in Paul’s narrative voice helped me to tolerate the experience. I found myself empathizing with our narrator’s views of how preposterous the meal is, whether it’s pointing out the amount of empty space on his plate, or the extreme closeup of the waiter’s finger as he drones detail after detail about each piece of food. Paul’s colorful commentary is not limited to just his brother, but to the experience of eating in this fancy restaurant itself. Paul will be damned if he orders the same food as his brother or agrees he likes the same type of movies. The sense of unease emerges from the beginning, as Paul makes it quite clear how much he detests his brother, who is a politician running for Prime Minister. The novel’s claustrophobic premise of the two couples at their table initially seems better suited for a stage play than a novel. Paul and Claire are invited to dinner by Paul’s brother Serge and his wife, Babette. The protagonist/narrator is Paul Lohman, a retired history teacher who is married to Claire, a cancer survivor. The Dinner takes place over the course of one evening inside a fancy gourmet restaurant in Amsterdam.
The Dinner (2009) by Herman Koch, Photo Credit: Natalie Getter
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