Review: 337

337 by M. Jonathan Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 Stars, bumped for the handling of trauma, addiction, manipulation of childhood memories, and its unflinching look at death and dying in an elderly relative.

M. Jonathan Lee's latest novel 337 is a poignant look at domestic abuse and emotional loss, particularly its effects on two brothers, Sam and Tom. We know from the start of the novel that their mother "left," and in leaving has doomed her two young children with their bullying and emotionally abusive father. Sam, the older child, is the central figure of the novel. He's recently had his marriage fall apart, is extranged from his father and paternal grandmother, and is distant from his younger brother Tom, who he both loves and was slightly jealous of while their mother was still with them. Tom has battled addiction and Sam thinks he's pretty much lost in a delusional world, one in which he is in a rock band and jams with Neil Young. As the book opens, Sam receives a call from his father, demanding that Sam go visit his Gramma, who is dying. Over the course of the novel you find out why his father is asking him to do this (not that it's an unreasonable request) and why everyone in this family has become so broken.

337 artfully peels back layer after layer of what happened in Sam's family as he has flashbacks to painful events in his childhood, including at the hands of detective inspectors investigating his mother's disappearance. Many of these are triggered by his visits to his grandmother, and his percolating desire to make peace with her before her death, even as he looks for answers about what happened with his parents. As Sam struggles to remain in the present, practicing what his therapist has taught him, events slowly converge on the fateful disappearance of his mother and what really happened in the days, weeks, months, and years after his mother's disappearance.

This novel is a poignant look at the legacy of domestic violence and the hard process of dying and repairing relationships at the cusp of death. The novel is incredibly poignant in its examination of Sam and his grandmother's last days. That said, some aspects of the story just felt unnecessarily contrived. The ending actually left me cold, since it was kind of what I assumed all along. I have a lot of thoughts about what happened with Sam's parents but they largely involve spoilers. This might be a good book club selection just for the discussion about what justice looks like in this novel.

The British hardcover edition of 337 has a twist in hardcover. The first fifteen pages of the novel differ, albeit subtly, on the blue-covered side of the hardcover versus the yellow-covered side. (I should note that this edition of the book is only available in hardcover in the U.K.) For me it was a bit of a distraction (though I'd recommend readers of the British edition start with the blue side) and honestly, I waited to see the US release today on Kindle to see how the US edition was handled. The hardcover is beautiful, with its saturated colors that, in a way, reflect the two brothers, Sam so blue, and Tom, as it turns out, so much sunnier. Honestly, however, the reader loses little in reading the US version.


I received a courtesy copy of the UK hardcover from Hideaway Fall in exchange for an honest review.

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You can read 337 on Kindle Unlimited in the US store, or purchase it for $4.99. If you want to look for the hardcover edition, I suggest Amazon.co.uk or Book Depository.

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