A review by la_karina1818
The Dinner by Herman Koch

mysterious tense medium-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

2.0

A novel with a promising concept and set up, but it didn't continue that way forward. The unreliable narrator, the father of one of the boys involved is the single voice narrating all the events happening in the story. I wished that it could have been a lot varied if each person on the table, got to have a point of view in the story. Through the middle part, it is established that 
he could be a possible link to his son's sociopathic behaviour due to an unspecified mental illness that he has. I also think that if the mental illness was told to us, it would have been a lot more intriguing, but loads of the juicy details were left out on purpose. For example, the constant repetition of the father's need to always punch people in the face could have been something caused by his mental illness, but to me I just found it annoying.
However, this shifts when 
his wife is presented to be the encouraging force behind her son's reckless behaviour, by hiding his role in the murder and later encouraging him to deal with Beau in whichever way he liked
which just changed the viewpoint without the build up of the previous link. The whole conflict revolves around whether the narrator's brother Serge should give up on his political career due to the actions of his son and nephew. This leads the family to
take it upon themselves to stop him from standing down and exposing himself, as his sister in law takes it into her own hands by attacking him.
All of the actions that the characters did had no repercussions whatsoever, which just made it incredibly unrealistic and potrays them as stereotypical villains. This could be due to the commentary made that because of their upper middle class status, they are able to get away with most things and hide them more easily. However, to me the law enforcement and hiding crimes isn't that easy as in real life. I didn't like that at the end  
they just put all the blame on the adopted boy, just because he thought it would be fun to threat them to release the video of the attack if they don't give him money.
I liked the structure of the novel, as it revolved around the dinner they had, the whole suspense part of it, which had none whatsoever but around 70% of the book was just flashbacks and memories. The narrator also focused on details that were completely irrelevant to the plot or the characters themselves, which made it quite tedious to read. Overall, it was a story with a nice concept, but everything else was a big flop. 
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