Bookshelf – Dining out on a good story — two to get really into

THE DINNER By Herman Koch Atlantic Books €15 â€ËœO would some power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as others see us,' Robert Burns once said. Middle class authors have a habit of poking fun at the follies and foibles of their own milieu, but rarely include themselves in the picture. Presumably it's assumed that the author, and the reader of course, are so sophisticated they're above parody. Woody Allen has made a meal ticket of this dog eat dog genre. Christopher Tsiolkas did it with impressive aplomb in The Slap where the world of the central character, the slapper, gradually disintegrates following his delivery of a much-needed slap to an obnoxious child at a garden party. Indeed, Roman Polanski's latest film Carnage covers much the same territory. Two urbane New York couples get togther to discuss a row involving their children. Naturally the veneer of sophisticated civilization soon breaks down and we get a glimpse of the festering underbelly which is often masked by right-on chit chat. And so Dutch writer Herman Koch mines a similar vein in The Dinner. Two couples meet in a very fashionable, and expensive, Amsterdam restaurant to discuss a predicament their sons have landed them in. The two fathers are brothers, one tipped as the next prime minister of Holland, the other a decommissioned teacher with anger management issues. Their wives are competitively friendly but there is little filial love between the brothers. The event they have come to discuss is a particularly nasty teenage jackass-type attack on a homeless person. The problem is, neither side is aware of how much the other knows when they walk in to the restaurant. The politician, it is assumed, wants to hush the whole thing up as it could harm his electoral prospect. The narrator, his brother Paul, it is taken from his moralistic evisceration of his brother's lifestyle, will want to bring the whole thing out in the open and take a moral stance. But all is not what it first appears. The book is divided into four sections: aperitif, main course, dessert and digestif. The restaurant is so â€Ëœin' that there's a three-month waiting list but Serge, the politician, has no bother getting a table. His more modest brother wins the reader's loyalty by taking us through the absurdities of modern high-end dining, the pretentiousness of the management and staff, the outrageous prices charged and the contrast between the lives led by the diners and the people passing by on the street outside. In truth, Serge is a git. Full of himself and not shy about showing it. So Paul takes us on a tour of their lives. His problems with his teaching career, his frustrations with his life â€â€ but at the same time he scathingly gives us a rundown on not only Serge's pretensions, his home in France, his political aspirations, his image enhancing adoption of an African child. While he's at it he broadens his canvas to take in much of society as well. All voyeuristically satisfying but not the real meat of the story. For the readers gradually learns that their sons are in a lot more trouble than it is first assumed. Here are two well-off kids looking at serious time if it is discovered what they have done. To complicate matters, their â€Ëœevent' is now up on You Tube and has a cult following of the more obnoxious kind. So while the dinner itself could have stood alone as an interesting social commentary, the plot involving the boys turns it into a thriller of sorts. This boils down basically to one of the four at the table deciding that the police should be informed and the other three determined to prevent this from happening. This is fine critique of contemporary morals as the term applies to the affluent classes. It is also a ripping good yarn that held me fixed throughout the read. It has the added pleasure of allowing the reader tut tut at the antics of the characters and reassure themselves that they're nothing like this. Worth the price for that alone. RUSH OF BLOOD By Mark Billingham Little Brown €16 STICKING to the dinner party theme of sorts, Mark Billingham, creator of the great Tom Thorne detective series, has a fine new stand-alone thriller out entitled Rush of Blood, Three British couples meet up while on holiday in Florida and become friends, of sorts. On the day they leave for home a young girl is snatched from their resort and murdered. Back home the couples stay in touch. While the common bond appears at first their holiday experiences, dinner parties in each others' houses, swapping snaps etc, pretty soon the investigation into the girl's murder begins to dominate their relationships. The lead detective on the case back in Florida asks the British police to check out of few details in relation to the statements made by the couples before they left. Nothing suspicious â€â€ just needs to gets his ducks in a row, as he puts it. The task of contacting the couples fall on trainee detective constable Jenny Quinlan who is anxious to impress her superiors. Rather than confine herself to her brief, checking a few car reg numbers and times the cops forgot to ask about in the first place, she starts on a bit of a solo run â€â€ much to the annoyance of all involved, especially the couples who resent the implication. But when another girl is snatched in London and the MO is along the same lines as the Florida case, bells begin to ring. But which one could it be? As fans of Billingham will know, he knows how to keep a reader guessing while casting suspicions all over the shop. In the process he drip-feeds the life stories of all involved and there's rarely a dull moment. This is quite a rare thing in contemporary mystery writing. A mystery that is a mystery. Rush of Blood is definitely one for the autumn fireside. Highly recommended.