Tuesday, June 11, 2013

The Dinner by Herman Koch

3.75 Stars.

Paul, Serge, Claire and Babette are spending an evening together having dinner. After running the gamut of dinner conversation (movies, menu, etc.) they will eventually run out of small talk and have to broach the subject of a horrible act that involved their teenage sons.

Okay, first STOP COMPARING THIS TO GONE GIRL. For real, it's like apples and orangutans. If you must compare this to something, I kept thinking of the Hitchcock classic "Rope" while reading this. You know something bad has happened, the author tells you almost everything you need to know right away, you just have to ride it out through this one teensie little dinner to get the whole payoff. If you go into it not expecting a high octane thriller like Gone Girl, but appreciate the subtlety of Koch's approach, you should enjoy it.

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