One fine day in a fine restaurant in Amsterdam, Paul Lohman and his beloved wife, Claire, await Lohman’s older brother, Serge, and his wife, Babette. Everything seems perfect, but from the very start of the dinner, something goes wrong. The extreme rich food and its expensive price irritate Paul and Serge shows his discomfort over his wrong choice of wine and its crumbling cork. Others might not see it, but The Dinner shows that those two brothers’ relationship filled with a latent rivalry that originates from the difference of their social status and attitude toward life.

Just as a dinner can start with an aperitif and moves to appetizer and main course, the novel begins with Paul preparing to go to the restaurant. While they are dining, two couples accidentally find out that their children are implicated in a villainous crime that has shocked the nation. When they see the news and the CCTV footage of the crime scene, both couples recognize their teenage sons. Now, during dinner they must decide what course of action they should take.

Other than its unique plot structure which follows the order of dinner course, how the author made each character also stands out. Early in the book, readers can sense the quiet cynical attitude of Paul, the narrator. Paul complains about all the annoyingness. He even describes the dinner with his brother as thus, “A fixed appointment for the immediate future is the gates of hell, and the actual evening is hell itself.” Readers, watching all the events through the eye of Paul, feel the constant tension at the table.

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As Serge breaks onto the scene, the tension of the dinner is intensified by his perfectionism and his efforts to belittle his younger brother, Paul. A successful politician and possibly the nation’s next Prime Minister, Serge incessantly expresses his sense of superiority over his brother Paul who is an unemployed teacher. Yet, Serge is sensitive to any mistakes he made and which Paul might criticize. After they start to talk about their sons’ crime, this rivalry surfaces and becomes clear to readers.

Their rivalry is not only used as a device for tension but also as a tool that reinforces the main question the book asks: How far can one go to protect one’s own family? As the polite manner of dinner evaporates and the conversation becomes overheated, the novel constantly asks readers to think about the role of parents and what a happy family looks like. Borrowing a quotation from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Paul was obsessed with living up to his ideal of a happy family and his efforts regarding it continues until the end of the novel.

By adopting a unique structure, Herman Koch, the author of The Dinner, succeeded in getting and keeping the attention of the reader. While one continues to, he or she may become a bit irritated by the narrator’s cynicism which even seems morbid. Nonetheless, that sort of skepticism enables readers to approach the theme of the book and thereby gives the food for thought. Please enjoy a long dinner with the two Lohman couples!