Full review here: http://www.shelfstalker.net/blog/dear-mr-m-herman-koch

Dear Mr. M begins as voyeuristic letters written to a well-known author in Norway. The stalker-like letters, which are almost more like diary entries, detail moments in the author’s life and even his wife and child’s movements throughout their day. Creepy, no?

But there is something else, details from a shared past that keep popping up. It seems that this shadowy figure behind the letters is harboring some pent-up feelings about one of Mr. M’s books, a book that although fiction, is based on true events.

These true events are ones that the letter writer was involved in, where a teacher who had an illicit affair with one of his high school students goes missing after last being seen by the student and her new boyfriend. They, of course, are suspected.

Then, there is an abrupt narrative switch and all of a sudden we are back in time, a fly on the wall learning about the true events that led up to Laura’s relationship with her teacher, Mr. Landzaat, and how she falls for her new (age-appropriate) boyfriend Herman and the ultimate disappearance of the teacher. It is almost shocking how the narrative voice switches.

There is yet another switch to the author Mr. M’s perspective and we watch as he handles his decline into authorial obscurity, overshadowed by younger, better writers, and haunted by the fact that he probably reached his pinnacle long ago and most people no longer bother to buy his books or even know who he is. Isn’t this what authors everywhere fear? Gaining fame from one book and then never being able to equal it?

Where the book really picks up is in its intersecting narratives. Past and present, fact and fiction, truth and lies. It contains a sort of meta-narrative, thinking about books that use real events but distort them.

It is a metafictional kind of novel, really interested in all the layers it can unpack, and eventually even entangling the reader in the web of lies and mystery. You feel kind of implicated by the end of the book and as I sat holding it at the end, I was entranced by the true power that a book could hold. What was real? What was false? Who would really know the truth?

Click here for full review.

This book is for lit lovers. It’s witty & meta. Koch is good at playing into a person’s reading expectations & flipping them. He makes people feel simultaneously “in” on the joke, but just enough out of the loop to save some surprises.

A literary thriller that is sectioned into several parts.

Definitely recommended if you liked The Dinner by Koch, or even if you’re a fan of coming of age clique tales like The Basic Eight or The Secret History, though that is one section of the story, it’s a huge chunk of the book. I also recommend it if you want to read random small talk about Dutch politics, or about the ironies of the literary world.

http://dsdmona1.blogspot.com.es/2016/05/estimado-senor-m.html

Thanks to NetGalley and Hogarth for providing me with an ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.

With Dear Mr. M, Herman Koch has perfected the art of suspense. Aging novelist M has seen his popularity on the decline. One of his best known novels was ripped from the headlines, a story about a teenage couple taking revenge on a philandering teacher who will not let a fling end. We know early on that M's neighbor is the teenage boy in the relationship. Is he a dangerous murderer? A misunderstood victim? A reformed criminal? The perspective bounces between chapters to illuminate past and present and blur the lines between good and evil, not to mention writer and subject. This is a delightfully tense and meta thriller that is more character study than action.

Idk. Was almost a DNF. But I’m stubborn. I think it could have been decent but idk I think some of it was just lost in translation (literally). Some parts were just so dry and meh.

Keeps you guessing

Read this after reading and enjoying "The Dinner". Initially this didn't grab my attention the way that one did but at the end I have to say that I liked this one quite a bit more. It takes a bit to figure out how the different story pieces fit together but by the final third you'll be flying g through pages wondering how it will wrap up. The final few twists do not disappoint and were pleasant surprises. Highly recommend especially if you liked "The Dinner".

It was not until Dutch writer Herman Koch published his sixth novel (he has also written multiple short story collections) that readers in this part of the world were generally able to find his work for the first time. That book, The Dinner, because it is home to one of the most unreliable narrators readers are likely to have encountered for a while, was a huge surprise to American readers who picked it up not knowing what to expect. Herman Koch was a hit in North America, and readers soon looked forward to more of his books – be they the five published before The Dinner or the ones to follow it.

Dear Mr. M, Koch’s eighth novel, once again makes good use of an unreliable narrator or two but still manages to keep its biggest surprise until the book’s last few pages. “Mr. M,” the book’s title character, is a prominent Dutch novelist who, as he is well aware, is fast-approaching the end of his career. The peak of that career, a novel based upon the likelihood that a teenaged couple murdered one of its teachers, is long behind him. He will never sell as many copies of a single book again, and he is trying to learn to be satisfied with his lesser numbers.

Mr. M, however, is not ready to roll over and die. On the contrary, he has a beautiful young wife and a daughter who will barely remember him if he dies anytime soon. He loves his family, and his books still sell in “respectable” numbers – and although he knows it or not, Mr. M has a downstairs neighbor who is absolutely infatuated with Mr. M and his daily routine. But that downstairs neighbor is not just interested in any book; he is obsessed with Mr. M’s fictional portrayal of what happened to the missing schoolteacher, and he is determined to discuss the real incident in detail with Mr. M. Whether the man wants to reveal the truth about what happened or to find out just how much Mr. M knows about it remains to be seen. Who is this guy, anyway?

Dear Mr. M is an intriguing murder mystery (was there even a murder?) told via multiple points-of-view and time periods, and the key characters are as well-developed as their psychotic personalities will realistically allow them to be known to the casual observer. The characters are of many types, but frankly, they are an unlikable lot who pretty much deserve each other and what happens to them. Dear Mr. M is a cynical novel, one filled with equally cynical characters, but that is the root of the darkness that makes the book so intriguing and, dare I say it…so much fun.