I recently returned from a beach vacation where, among other activities, I indulged in summer reading from the comfort of our bed and breakfast. I purposely selected a couple of “light reading” novels for this trip, deciding without hesitation that the book I’m currently reading (The Mueller Report, as published by The Washington Post) was not quite vacation material. My choice led me to take along two fiction works which had long been consigned to my “to read” pile: They All Fall Down by Roxanne St. Claire, and The Dinner by Herman Koch.
They All Fall Down by Roxanne St. Claire is a young adult novel which I purchased due to Amazon.com’s recommendation concerning its similarity to Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard. (I will confess that Pretty Little Liars is a guilty pleasure of mine, as I have read all sixteen books in the series.) The premise concerns a “list” composed by high school boys in which female classmates are ranked by attractiveness. The “list” takes on heightened significance when the young women it contains begin to be murdered in numerical order.
Unfortunately, in my view They All Fall Down cannot be favorably compared to Shepard’s series. The explanation for the students’ murders turns out to be absolutely preposterous. This is coming from a reader who sat through sixteen books of A’s blackmail (in PLL), so please be assured that it was even less plausible/reasonable than the narrative leaps that take place in that series. To add insult to injury, the work is poorly written (and I do hate to say this), with repeated mentions of “sexy eyes” and one character’s ridiculous nickname (“Fifth” – what teenager would call someone “Fifth?”).
The Dinner by Herman Koch proved much more palatable than its companion. Deft usage of the “unreliable narrator” device produces a suspense novel with a distinctly Scandinavian flavor. The novel takes place over a single meal between two couples whose relationship is contextualized by frequent flashbacks. The couples’ relationship is tense, and their sons have jointly committed a hate crime for which they have not been apprehended. I did take a bit of offense at the author’s implication that one protagonist’s apparent sociopathy stemmed from an autism spectrum disorder (ASD); however, the illness was never specifically named, so I tried not to get too caught up in this detail. I ultimately enjoyed the work and agree with the comparisons to Gone Girl (another book I have reviewed here) found in the novel’s jacket.
I would not consider either of the two books to be the next great American novel. I nonetheless found them to be enjoyable enough, even if I did end up hate-reading the last section of They All Fall Down. All in all, the two books fulfilled their purpose as “beach reading” – but if you are at the bookstore and selecting between them, be sure to pick up The Dinner.
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