The Dinner in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Jun 11, 2017 Rebecca Heneghan rated it liked it

Enjoyable book on a flight from LA but its hard to like anything about people that are pretty awful.

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Oct 06, 2022 Joanna rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2022-read, rws-2022-fall

This book should be filed on the same shelf with We Need to Talk About Kevin, Defending Jacob, and maybe also with The Wasp Factory and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. In other words, books with very disturbing, grim themes and unlikeable characters from whom it's hard to look away.

Unlike some reviewers, I found the book compulsively readable and thought that the author managed to entrap me in just what his characters were describing--wanting to watch a horrible thing happen from a just safe e ...more

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Jan 30, 2019 Graceann rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: pop-sugar-2019, general-fiction

It's not too terribly often that I finish a book and say "dafuq did I just read?" Not in the "wow, that was heavy and it's going to take some time to process" way, but in the "how high would I have to be to have enjoyed that?" way.

Two brothers and their wives get together at a fancy restaurant to discuss something deeply disturbing that their children have done. The story actually starts off well, in a Bonfire of the Vanities, Notes on a Scandal sort of way. Nobody is particularly likeable or ev It's not too terribly often that I finish a book and say "dafuq did I just read?" Not in the "wow, that was heavy and it's going to take some time to process" way, but in the "how high would I have to be to have enjoyed that?" way.

Two brothers and their wives get together at a fancy restaurant to discuss something deeply disturbing that their children have done. The story actually starts off well, in a Bonfire of the Vanities, Notes on a Scandal sort of way. Nobody is particularly likeable or even redeemable. Even the secondary characters are fairly full of unearned superiority. But that's kind of awesome. There is a sequence about the servers' habit at chi-chi poo-poo restaurants of pointing at each item on your plate, with a pinkie finger, and describing where it was sourced. Never an index finger; never a full hand - always the pinkie. It was spot on and very amusing. There is also the unspoken communication that goes on between people who have been together a long time. That was uncannily accurate, as those of us who can read our partners' mood from their raised eyebrow can attest, and it was fun to read.

But then, things went so far off the rails that it was like the train crash scene in Buster Keaton's The General. Idiotic choices abound. Selfishness, untreated mental illness, political ambition, unhinged parental love, and a dozen or so other rancid types of pasta are thrown at the wall here. Instead of sticking, they just pull the wall down onto themselves. The protagonist, whose first-person account this is, is convinced of his own superior intelligence (all evidence provided by his actions to the contrary). His family members are each jerks in their own special, separate ways, too.

I happily get on board with characters who are venal, lacking in decency, sometimes even stupid (if that's played for laughs), but if there isn't any compelling reason behind it, the story loses my attention pretty quickly. By about the halfway mark, The Dinner was a slog for me, it wasn't amusing, entertaining, informative or even interesting. It was just ugly people doing ugly things for ugly reasons (or for no reason), and that gets boring superfast.

I see by the other GoodReads reviews that The Dinner is a particularly polarizing book - either one loves it or really, really hates it. I wanted to be the former but I'm leaning toward the latter. I didn't hate it; I didn't want to grind the pages into pulp and bury them in the garden. I was just annoyed that the beginning of the story, which held promise for a fun, twisted read, turned out to be a frustrating waste of my time. ...more

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May 23, 2016 Amy rated it liked it

In Koch's The Dinner, readers will find themselves being served a chilling story that pits family members against each other and whose mess will be cleaned up before dessert. As the author chronicles the Lohman families dinner service, readers are treated to extra helpings of intrigue, plotting and the layers reveal an aphrodisiac main course that will leave them reaching for another glass of wine to wash down the chilling dish. Will this be their last meal or does the saying 'revenge is best se ...more

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Aug 24, 2013 Megan rated it really liked it

Shelves: international-reads, mysteries-thrillers-suspense, tea-and-tomes-book-club-books, scandinavia, europe, contemporary, great-now-i-am-hungry-fiction, translated-into-english, library-loans

I'll rate/review closer to this month's book club meeting

I had a hard time deciding on the rating -- this was one creepy book with a dearth of likable characters. In fact, I can't say I liked any of them very much by the time I got to the end. However, I liked the way the story evolved and seeing how a seemingly innocuous dinner turned into something else. If I hadn't known this book had been translated from Dutch into English, I wouldn't have realized it was a translation -- always a tricky fea ...more

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Aug 30, 2018 Marcella rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-50-book-challenge, fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 05, 2019 Taryn rated it it was ok

I do think it's best to go in blind because what I liked about this book was having NO idea where it was going. That much keeps it compelling. There are many 'what the fuck' moments and I really questioned what I was even reading. However, I just didn't like the writing, and I really didn't like how things felt disjointed as the story progressed. There were things that were vague and just didn't make sense. Not sure if the translation can account for that, but either way, it didn't quite land wi ...more

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