The Dinner by Herman Koch

I picked this book because NPR books recommended it. I was interested to know how the author, Herman Koch, can write an entire novel about one dinner.

This novel is about relationships. A brother is jealous of his big brother because he is more successful than him. The two brothers and their wives, sit down for dinner at a high-end restaurant, to figure out how to deal with the murder committed by their teenage sons. The book is divided into five sections, Aperitif, Appetizer, Main Course, Dessert and Digestif. I regretted buying this book until I came to the Main Course.

There a few details in this book, which have been hammered down to death. The entire Aperitif and Appetizer section is about the restaurant, the setting and the manager with his pinkie hovering over the dishes. It was too much to read in such a great detail, about the mundane setting and the ordinary servers, managers and the other diners in the restaurant. I was also tired of the younger brother bitching about the success of his big brother. He speaks about how people treat his big brother because he is a successful politician, how they get down to their knees to please him.

The book became interesting, after the younger brother describes the murder committed by his son and nephew and delves into his past. I will always remember one point of view of the younger brother. He was a history teacher at one of the schools in Germany. He asks his students to do a simple arithmetic; ‘If Second World War has not taken place, if all the 55,000,000 people had been able to just go on fucking, how many people would be there now? ’ He believes that most of the people who were killed in World War II deserved to die. He supports his stand by saying, ‘don’t you have an aunt or an uncle is your family who is a weirdo and wished he or she were dead? Definitely there were a few people like that who were dead in World War II.’

I would recommend reading this book, but you need to have a ton of patience until the Main Course, after that you cannot keep the book down. This novel is all about the complexity of relationships and about one weirdo family who will go to any extent to protect their son.