Reviews with content warning for Medical content - The Dinner

Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

The Dinner by Herman Koch

9 reviews

j_schley's review

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book will leave you feeling profoundly unsettled and very disturbed. Yet, it was almost impossible for me to put down. There’s a pervasive and thick feeling of unease from the first page, and any opinions you form of characters or situations will not hold true by the novel’s conclusion.

If you enjoy unreliable narrators, moral ambiguity, and questions of ethics, this is absolutely a story you’ll want to pick up. It’s grimy and gritty and dark but provokes many questions about the mercurial nature of human morality and the tenuous bonds of dysfunctional families.

I also don’t advise reading this book while eating, despite its innocuous title.

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sylvestra's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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hannahpeterson's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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torturedreadersdept's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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beklovesbooks's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

3.75

Well done. Dark, creepy, sometimes hard to relate to. I like that it all takes place over one long dinner with flashbacks.

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clemrain's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Where do you begin with The Dinner? I suppose it would be with the dinner.

This book takes course through one dinner. An important dinner and discussion between difficult characters that are strong in their beliefs and will act on them. That is a threat.

The narrator, Paul, is astonishingly written. A wild ride of inner dialogues and anecdotes that are placed in just the right places. Koch uses great pacing and placements of Paul’s recounts. Paul is of the best unreliable narrator’s I’ve read.

The Dinner is such a real depiction of racism, prejudice and privilege. That doesn’t catch on until it does and then it just settles. I can’t explain it. Koch does such a good job. You really get put into the disillusionment of these people. It’s astonishing. These are some well written and realistic characters though majority of them, I really don't like.

I wish I could read this book in its original language. I wonder how much it would’ve differed. The pacing the wording. Either way, I do think this translation is effective.

The ending

is five stars to me. Of course it ended like that. There is no consequence for people like Paul. It was realistic. Though I wonder a lot what “disease” Paul left unmentioned. I wonder our conclusions as readers are meant to be us facing our own prejudice.

This book is frustrating and for most of it I was just trying to understand what the point was. But there is a point and I wonder if it’ll ever be understood by the people this book is about.

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