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The Dinner

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The Dinner

By: Herman Koch
Narrated by: Clive Mantle
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Shortlisted for: International Author of the Year – Specsavers National Book Awards 2012

A summer's evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse - the banality of work, the triviality of holidays. 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, and as civility and friendship disintegrates, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

©2009 Herman Koch (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Family Life Genre Fiction Culinary Adventures
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This took me 2 days to start and finish. Utterly compelling. Fantastic narrator. Disturbing characters. I'm a sucker for a story that looks beneath a brittle exterior of normality that exposes a rotten core. Listen to this book.

Addictive book.

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Great book and great performance of the narrator. Quite unexpected plot turns and ending. The book is looking into a question of what would you do as a parent to protect your child even if your child is wrong. The description of the characters is perfect and the story is engaging.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys good reads/listens and likes the interpersonal relationships stories.

Thought provoking book

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I couldn't stop listening but it still felt very boring. The main character wasn't likeable and I felt like the story was dull, I felt like I was waiting for action the whole way through.

Still confused over whether I enjoyed it or not...

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The narrator portrayed the quirks of the protagonist very well .
Unexpected twists & turns as the tale concludes .
I want to watch the film adaptation .

Contempt each of the characters have for one another but try to conceal

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Clive Mantle does an excellent job of bringing the characters to life in this audiobook - his reading is lively and he manages to give voice to the female characters without adopting an annoying falsetto.

The book mixes a funny take-down of the pretentions of snooty restaurants with the drama of parents confronted by the dilemma of how to respond to the crimes of their children.

Enjoyable book, great narrator

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