March Newsletter

February 28, 2014 | Book Buzz | Comments (0)

The Dinner
By: Herman Koch

Dinner 300It’s a summer’s evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Skewering everything from paren'ting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

Publisher Description

Upcoming Reads:

April

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

and

The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart

May

The Find by Kathy Page

 

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