Dear Mr M
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4.0 • 6 Ratings
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A hair-raising new tour de force from Herman Koch, New York Times bestselling author of The Dinner and Summer House with Swimming Pool.
Once a celebrated writer, M's greatest success came with a suspense novel based on a real-life, unsolved disappearance. It told the story of a history teacher who went missing one winter after his brief affair with a stunning pupil. Upon publication, M's novel was a bestseller, one that marked his international breakthrough.
That was years ago, and now M's career is almost over as he fades increasingly into obscurity. But not when it comes to his bizarre, seemingly timid neighbour who keeps a close eye on him. Why?
From various perspectives, Herman Koch tells the dark tale of a writer in decline, a teenage couple in love, a missing teacher, and a single book that entwines all of their fates. Thanks to M's novel, supposedly a work of fiction, everyone seems to be linked forever, until something unexpected spins the "story" off its rails.
With racing tension, sardonic wit, and a world-renowned sharp eye for human failings, Herman Koch once again spares nothing and no one in his gripping new novel, a barbed thriller suspending readers in the mysterious literary grey space between fact and fiction.
Herman Koch was born in 1953. He is a successful actor, screenwriter and columnist in the Netherlands, and has written a number of satirical novels, including The Dinner, which became an international bestseller. The Dinner was adapted for stage and screen in the Netherlands and an English-language film adaptation starring Richard Gere, Steve Coogan, Laura Linney and Chloë Sevigny is in production.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We had a hard time getting anything done because all we wanted to do was rip through this devilishly clever novel. It’s easy to imagine Herman Koch—who hit gold with his unsettling domestic thriller The Dinner—chuckling in delight while writing Dear Mr. M, a story within a story within a story. It starts with an unnamed narrator who holds a serious grudge against the famous writer who lives in the apartment above him. Koch carefully doles out breadcrumbs of information, leading us on a wild and creepy literary treasure hunt.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Dutch author of The Dinner keeps the reader pleasantly off balance in a tale about a fading novelist and the crime that inspired the book that brought him fame. At first, the aging Mr. M, who lives with his "lovely, young" and "self-effacing" wife and three-year-old daughter, is observed only through the cool eyes of his younger downstairs neighbor, whom M consistently fails to recognize outside of the apartment building. Later, the misanthropic M gets his own chapters in the spotlight as he considers disposing of the middle-aged housewives attending a library book-signing or engages in fisticuffs with a rival at an authors' dinner. Other characters taking their moment in the spotlight include M's wife, Ana, and the two young inspirations for M's novel, Herman and Laura, who may or may not have done away with their high school history teacher. All have motives and feelings that are more twisted than one first suspects. Koch cleverly lays out the pieces of his puzzle, letting first one pattern and then another emerge, and leaving the final piece in reserve until the last few pages. His sardonic sense of humor and dark perspective on human failings give the novel a greater, more satisfying depth than the usual thriller.
