The Dinner by Herman Koch has been out for quite a while, but I hadn't come across it until I saw it mentioned in a review for another domestic thriller. The dust jacket is a vague and ominous in its description of two couples who meet for dinner to discuss their teenage sons. We know that something bad has happened, but it's a long time before we get the first glimpses of what that was and longer still before we realize how bad things are....and of course I can't tell you more than that without spoilers.
What I can tell you is that the whole story is told by Paul. We don't bounce around between characters or in time, but he doesn't reveal everything in order. Like the couples at dinner, there are formalities to get through first along with detailed descriptions of the food, and Dutch politics, and the man standing next to Paul at the urinal in the men's room.
There's not much to like about these people but their story was intriguing and pulled me in. I read the whole thing over the course of an afternoon and evening because I got caught up by the language and plot and it was so easy to keep turning pages. Paul is deliberately vague about several things but I'm pretty sure I understand what happened except for one glaring "that's not how that works!" moment.
The bad things have already happened, or happen off screen so this is an exploration of how the characters deal with what they and their children have done.
I went to the library the next morning and checked out two of the author's other books. Hopefully they're as intriguing.
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