THE DINNER by Herman Koch

As a parent, I asked myself “the Big Question”: how far would I be willing to go to protect my child, if my child has done something terrible?
Theoretically, I think to myself that I will still keep my moral values intact even if it came to the point where I had to protect my child. (Not to mention I am not even thinking about what would happen if my husband did not agree with me about that situation.)
In practice, I am not so sure anymore. Especially after reading “The dinner”.

Herman Koch, my favorite Dutch author, is analyzing that situation where the only teenage son of an intellectual couple, who was raised to be compassionate of the less fortunate, sets a homeless person on fire while he was drunk. As the story unfolds, the son remains unidentified by the police.

The passage that I chose for you is the one where the father realizes that the criminal on the news is his very own son. Meanwhile, the father awaits a reaction from his wife as she watches the footage, to start discussing what they are going to do about it.

“Looking back, I can recall the exact moment when I realized that this is not about boys like our nephew or our son, but about our son himself (and about our nephew). It was a cold and deathly quiet moment. Down to the very second, I could still point out the moment in the footage when I tore my eyes away from the TV and looked at Claire’s face in profile.

Because the investigation is still underway, I’m not going to talk here about what made me realize, with a shock of recognition, that I was sitting on the couch watching our son pelt a homeless woman with office chairs and garbage bags. And laughing.

I looked, as I said before, at Claire’s face in profile. If she turned her head and looked at me, I would know. Then she would have the same thing I did.
Claire turned her head and looked at me.
I held my breath- or rather, I took a deep breath, so that I could be the first to say something. Something- I didn’t know exactly which words I would use- that would change our lives.
Claire held the bottle of red wine: there was only a bit left in the bottom, just enough for half a glass.
– Do you want this? she asked. Or should I open another one?“

The author forces us to envision the worst possible situation we could encounter as parents and forces us to think of our reaction to such horrific circumstances in which our children could be involved. That is why, for me, it was not easy to read his book.

But I love the writing style of Herman Koch and his thinking, therefore in the future, I plan to share with you another one of his books that were translated in English.

Published by Hogarth, 2012