{"id":1823,"date":"2013-05-01T15:27:44","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T15:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/?p=1823"},"modified":"2015-04-04T16:23:20","modified_gmt":"2015-04-04T16:23:20","slug":"the-dinner-by-herman-koch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/?p=1823","title":{"rendered":"The Dinner by Herman Koch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

This novel revolves around two brothers and their wives having a five-course dinner in a very upscale Amsterdam restaurant in the Netherlands. They have come together for an uncomfortable conversation. One of the brothers, Serge,\u00a0is a\u00a0famous politician while the other brother, Paul,\u00a0is a “retired” history teacher. The brothers don’t get along.\u00a0 As the story unfolds, you learn that\u00a0Paul, the narrator,\u00a0actually loathes his older brother and can’t understand how his sister-in-law can tolerate him. Their 15-year old sons, however, do get along, and it is discovered that they have done something extremely awful, which is the reason for this uncomfortable\u00a0dinner.\u00a0The boys’\u00a0actions\u00a0are so shocking that the whole nation is upset after seeing video footage of the incident on the nightly news. The\u00a0boys’ identities\u00a0are not generally known because their faces\u00a0were never seen. However, the parents do know what\u00a0their sons have\u00a0done.\u00a0\u00a0As the dinner progresses, it’s amazing and alarming\u00a0to see how far\u00a0these families\u00a0will go to protect their children, even when they have committed a crime. This is a very quick read because, as the tension in the story builds between each course, you don’t want to stop reading until you see how these two very different\u00a0families deal with their compulsion that their children can do no wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This novel revolves around two brothers and their wives having a five-course dinner in a very upscale Amsterdam restaurant in the Netherlands. They have come together for an uncomfortable conversation. One of the brothers, Serge,\u00a0is a\u00a0famous politician while the other brother, Paul,\u00a0is a “retired” history teacher. The brothers don’t get along.\u00a0 As the story unfolds, … Continue reading The Dinner by Herman Koch<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,47,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-for-adults","category-fiction","category-reviewed-by-joann","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}