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Saturday, September 19, 2015

3-2-1 Chapter Review for The Dinner by Herman Koch



3-2-1 Chapter Review for The Dinner by Herman Koch.

Two couples go to dinner and it unfolds that together their respective teenage sons committed a violent crime, though their identities have yet to be discovered by anyone else besides the parents.

I joined a newly formed book club at work and this was the first on the list.  Although, I enjoyed it as a whole it didn’t match the hype in my opinion. Perhaps it was lost in translation. Nevertheless, my 3-2-1 Chapter One Review.

The Good – The first chapter has a quite delicate cynicism which was easy to read, particularly the part about how historians could measure this society by articles about the ‘top’ restaurants.

The Good – The imagery of Serge Lohman (the main character’s politician brother) walking into a restaurant with an air of ‘please carry on, don’t mind me’ was quite humorous and entertained me.

The Good – Using what the narrator found negative to give us an idea of what this person’s character was cleverly done.

The Bad – I found the opening writing a tad jerky. Again this could be down to the translation from Dutch to English.

The Bad – Again with the restaurants! After a point I got fed up with listening to the character’s gripes about pretentious restaurants and I just wanted to get on with the story.  The first chapter is admittedly short, but the complaining continues pretty much throughout the book.

The Beautiful - 'I won’t say which restaurant, because next time it might be full of people who’ve come to see whether we’re there.'