A highly praised novel of psychological suspense, The Dinner is an intriguing and readable book about a troubling subject matter.
Told in the first-person by Paul Lohman, a seemingly loving husband and father, as he sits down with his older brother and his brother's wife for a quiet dinner at an expensive restaurant, as he slowly reveals, through flashbacks that grow more disturbing as they go along, that there is more than meets the eye to this family gathering.
Revealing any more would be unfair. Suffice it to say that this is a dark novel, and one which gets darker and more disturbing chapter by chapter.
Koch's prose is on the chilly side, and all his characters are more or less unlikable. But there's a pitch-black mystery at the core of this novel that keeps one reading, no matter how unsavory things get, and Koch has some interesting things to say about mental illness, evil, and nature vs. nurture. But this is a challenging read; an unpleasant story about unpleasant people. And the ending, though shocking, is heavy-handed and implausible.
As far as psychological suspense novels go, this is a good if pedantic one, and only recommended to readers who like their mysteries dark and nihilistic.
* Adapted into a feature film starring Richard Gere, in 2017.
Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2020.
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