Paul Lohman and his wife Claire are going out to dinner with Paul's brother Serge, a charismatic and ambitious politician, and his wife Babette. Paul knows the evening will not be fun. The restaurant will be over-priced and pretentious, the head waiter will bore on about the organically certified free-range this and artisan-fed that, and almost everything about Serge, especially his success, will infuriate Paul.
But as the evening wears on it becomes clear that tonight's dinner will be even more difficult than usual. There is something the two couples have to discuss. It's about their teenage sons and the very bad thing they have been doing.
And it's about how far two sets of parents will go to save their children from the consequences of their actions.
The Dinner
Hailed as the European Gone Girl, The Dinner is a tense thriller set over the course of a meal at which two brothers and their wives will discuss a disturbing incident involving their sons. Koch meticulously unpacks the characters, their history and the events that have brought us to this moment, throwing in a good pinch of social commentary and an insight into contemporary Dutch life. Giving the book this set timeline of the dinner really amps the intensity and the pace of novel, keeping the reader both enthralled and horrified. A subtle, chilling and intelligent novel, I don't normally read this genre but I think I've been converted. As reviewed by 08sv
Toombul, 28/07/2014
