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The mayor of Amsterdam suspects his wife of infidelity in The Dinner author’s largely convincing portrait of a charmed life unravelling
Dutch author Herman Koch is best known for The Dinner, his 2012 global bestseller about a meal at a swanky restaurant that descends into a slanging match. The novel was notable for its relentless nastiness: at its heart is a horrific act of teenage violence (which the meal has been convened to discuss), and the adults are all equally ghastly. This grimness may be the best explanation for its success: there was a sense that Koch was holding up a mirror to bourgeois life, and revealing – none too subtly – the darkness at its heart.
Koch’s latest novel is set in a broadly similar milieu. Narrator Robert Walter is the mayor of Amsterdam (one of the diners in The Dinner was a famous politician). Everything about his life seems correct, well-ordered: he is contentedly married, with a delightful teenage daughter, and his professional life involves plenty of hobnobbing with the rich and famous (Bill Clinton, he reports, is a “turbo-charged version of myself”). Aside from an intense aversion to wind turbines, Robert appears to have few convictions or principles: his skill lies in that old politicians’ trick – telling people what they want to hear. Yet while he is cynical, you can’t help warming to him – and he’s certainly more sympathetic than any of the characters in The Dinner. Continue reading...