337 by M. Jonathan Lee

I was recently given the opportunity to review 337 by M. Jonathan Lee, an upcoming release from Hideaway Fall. The narrative follows Sam Darte, a youngish man whose family was destroyed after his mother disappeared from their home when he was young. The novel picks up years later, Sam stuck in a rut and estranged from his wife and the rest of his family. Sam is pulled back to the mystery of his mother's disappearance after he receives a phone call from his father, who is in prison, telling Sam that his grandmother is dying. Realizing the his Gramma might have some information, Sam decides to visit her and reignites his investigation.

The novel is part family drama and part mystery. Sam's mother is absent from the entire novel, but she is its heart and what keeps the whole thing going. A lot of the pleasure of this book lies in slow-burns and reveals, so I will do my best to leave those things in the dark that seem most appropriate. Here are a few things that struck me about this book.

The mystery at the heart of the novel is what has happened to Sam's mother. At the moment the novel opens, Sam seems to be just grinding through his days without experiencing much. The impending death of his grandmother is the inciting incident of the novel and it starts the slow reopening of Sam's character and relationships within the family. Sam's search for the truth about what happened that day allows him to reconnect with some of his family members while he re-covers ground he has already looked into and let go.

Sam hopes that his grandmother may have some information that he has overlooked or that she never mentioned in the past. See, when Sam and his brother were children, their mother left the family with just a note for their father to take care of them. She was never seen alive after that aside from a couple of witnesses who may have spotted her over the next few days. The police suspect the father and he is eventually convicted and imprisoned for her murder. However, no body was ever recovered and the conviction relied on Sam's testimony. The thing of it all is that Sam was never certain that his mother had ever died.

A lot of the middle of the novel reveals Sam's investigations, his relationship with his estranged wife and brother, and his reconciliation with his grandmother. The novel turns slightly as Sam's brother Tom shows up to see their grandmother before she dies and the two are able to reconcile as well. The grandmother's death takes over as the central narrative force in the novel in this section. In this section, Sam realizes that his brother's life is both what he thought it was and a bit more. What Sam had assumed were Tom's lies about people he knows turn out to be true.

After Gramma's death, Sam destroys the box of research that he had kept regarding his mother's disappearance. His grandmother's death seems to signal to him that whatever happened to his mother may remain a mystery to him. The mother doesn't show up and the only new information that Gramma had been able to provide was that maybe three people had seen his mother after her disappearance, but this doesn't lead anywhere. There is one final narrative twist that happens at the very end that I don't want to reveal too much here.

One of the more interesting features that emerges over the course of the novel is the way that Sam's relationship with work is reflected. Lee invents a tool called “mySnug” that tracks Sam's online work. Sam finds some inventive ways to work around the online system to make it look like he is doing more than he does, but he is constantly faced with the mySnug counter, which reads off the amount of time he has logged for the week and also the amount of time that he has left to fulfill. Lee uses this system to help the reader to track Sam's time through the week as well. What this does is to reveal, first, the repetitious nature of Sam's work, and second, the repetitious nature of life and the patterns that emerge whether we mean them to or not. The reader (at least this reader) recognizes the cyclical nature of the work week and the countdown to get it done.

There are two last features that I would mention here: the book format and the title. I am still mulling over the significance of these two items. So rather than providing any kind of analysis of them, I will present my observations and leave it up to you to do with it what you will.

First, this book features similar front and back cover designs and the opening material on both ends is the same. However, if you begin reading from one end, you get to read 15 pages before you are advised to flip the book over and begin reading it there from page 16. You are told, “Nothing is as it seems...” From here, the book seems to proceed in a more traditional narrative way. The chapters are short and tend to narrate in segments as Sam experiences them. I will say that the book flip eluded me. I waited to see if this would pay off and, aside from the warning that things are not as they seem, I didn't catch anything. I am used to postmodern, meta-fictional elements in books, but I didn't catch on to what this was meant to convey. (Please note the double-ended upside-down opening for this book is available in books ordered in hard copy from UK booksellers only.)

The chapter format is also a bit untraditional and I believe that it ties the structure and some narrative elements together. The chapters are structured normally through 66. Chapters 67 through 75 have headings but are left blank. The chapter heading then skip to number 336 and 337, both of which have brief content. Chapter 336 is a bit of a recap of what had happened between chapter 66 and the present and chapter 337 turns the novel in a way I won't mention here in case you want to read it. This last chapter doesn't necessarily change everything in the novel, but it does continue the mystery and leaves it - to some extent – unresolved, but ties in with this last feature.

The title, 337, is not referenced in the novel at all until this final chapter. Even in the final chapter it is not referenced aside from the chapter number. The way that the typeface on the cover is designed, the title and the author's last name mirror one another. This is especially evident on the spine of the book. This could point to some self-reflective or autobiographical elements in the novel, though I am not certain of this at all. There is another potential significance to the number 337 that seems to coincide with themes in the novel. The angel number 337 encourages those who see it to have the courage to live their lives differently. It is an encouragement to having meaningful experiences. This seems to connect with Sam's life before reconnecting with his family and his interface with work and the mySnug app. This final chapter – and what happens in it – may be inducements for Sam to make good on the positive changes that he had lately made in his life and to cheer him on in letting go of the things that were weighing him down.

As I mentioned above, I don't have a final analysis of these last couple of points. Overall, though, I found the book an enjoyable read. Lee does a good job developing characters and establishing tension throughout. I don't mind a lack of resolution in a novel, and I think that some interpretations of this story will lend their own resolution, even if the central mystery of what happened to Sam's mother is never revealed.