Time for Dinner?

Remember when I mentioned I had purchased The Dinner by Herman Koch over my spring break? Remember I had said it was compared to Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, another novel I've read?

Remember those feelings you have sometimes when someone sticks their nose in your business? Where someone threatens your kid? Your family? Remember how what you'd like to do is hurt them, but as an adult you recognize what's right from wrong? In this book all those social constructs that keep us from pummeling the jerk across the room disappear and we're dropped into a Dutch world where two couples meet to discuss their children. Just like Gone Girl I couldn't tell who I liked and who I didn't; who I felt sympathy for and who I hoped would get karma thrown at their face ... your sympathy in Flynn's novel switches from the cheating husband to the psycho wife. And in the end they both get what they deserve - each other. In Koch's novel however ..... everyone is disgusting. They are nasty human beings who in order to "save" their children from their own damaging mistakes sacrifice one another like you might sacrifice starving dogs that are thrown in a pen - only one will come out the winner, and the others will be demolished. Demolished, if not physically, then emotionally.

The Dinner is a quick read, and really little of it has to do with that fateful dinner on that fateful night. Serge Lohman and his sniffling and highly irritating wife, Babette, are coming to meet his brother Paul, our narrator, and his wife Claire. In the beginning I viewed Claire as a puppet for Paul to love and use, but in the end when everything escalates in to a "what the hell?!" situation, I realized that without Claire our narrator Paul would be nonexistent. The Lohman couples are meeting to discuss their children. Children who have committed a terrible crime; a crime that throws the book into wayward flashbacks and side conversations on sexism, racism, and class-ism.

The book becomes highly political, and sociologically it's a doozy. Paul's downward spiral starts when he goes rogue as a teacher and states in his history class that not all of the victims of WWII were "innocent" and thus really some of them probably deserved to die. He roughly states something along the lines of "haven't you ever wanted someone to die? And so of all the victims of WWII, someone was probably glad that some of those people died." Thus we start to learn about the "disorder" that Paul has, which is never specified because it is none of our business. Turns out, his dear son Michel is a lot like dad - hence the crime that now brings a family to discuss their sons - cousins - and this discussion sparks the debate of the innocence of victims, and sparks the question of class-ism. If you're homeless do you have rights? Do you ever have the right to interrupt someone's privacy? And if you do interrupt that right then do I have the right hurt YOU? Privacy, innocence, minding your business, and the drivel of everyday life - these are themes of The Dinner.

The characters truly are reprehensible. In the book at one point, Paul recalls a moment where his wife was sick, but with what? Well, that's none of our business. He recalls again this idea of innocence. How people are not innocent, and many of us thirst for the dirty details. He talks about colleagues, friends and family asking "Is it life threatening?" and he responds with, "...you could hear the thirst for sensation right through [their voice]: when people get a chance to come close to death without having it touch them personally, they never miss the opportunity. What I also remember well is the urge I felt to answer that question in the affirmative. 'Yes, it's life threatening.' I wanted to hear the silence that would drop at the other end after an answer like that" (pg. 198). This man who is narrating this whole dinner ordeal for us yearns to make others uncomfortable, to make others hurt. He mentions at one point how that hospital was horrible, but since it was  none of our business which hospital she was at, he could not tell people to stay away. "I would only like to urgently advise those who attach any value to life - their own, or that of their family and loved ones - to never let themselves be admitted there. That, by the same token, is my dilemma: it's nobody's business which hospital Claire was in, but at the same time I want to warn everyone to stay as far away from it as possible" (pg. 200). Does he ever give up the hospital name? Do we have learn of what caused Claire to become so ill? Nope.

The problem with the boys committing a crime, the problem with Paul Lohman himself, is that he deeply and dramatically feels at all points in life that he doesn't ever owe anyone an explanation for anything. This leads to violence. He shouldn't have to explain anything to anyone about anything, but when he does it never seems to end well for him. Having a son who suffers from this same ideology or "disorder" (which is never specified) launches the family into turmoil. The difference between Paul and his semi-famous politician brother Serge is simply this - Paul owes no one an explanation, and Serge thinks he owes EVERYONE an explanation.

The Lohman's have a sense of entitlement - not necessarily that they are entitled to anything, but that certain people are inherently better than others, and when certain people act "inappropriately" then they should be punished. The dinner ends explosively, carefully planned out, and eventually what the four adults came to dinner to discuss is not solved, but obliterated.

You will want to read this nasty and underhanded book more than once. You'll want to read it all over again just to make sure you heard it all right the first time. And at the end, you'll either be laughing like a lunatic or you'll close the book very slowly, only to open it back up quickly to see if the ending has changed to make more sane sense.

This is one of my favorite books I've read so far this year. Please read it!