The Surrendered

Aug 14, 2011 Julie Ekkers rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I loved this book, which concerns the lives of two people, deeply impacted by horrors of war, in this case, the Korean War. There are other characters in the book, some of them quite major and others not, all of which are keenly depicted. I found myself alternately rooting for and despising the main characters. They are very, very real, and I was absolutely compelled by their trying to make their way through a life and make sense of themselves and their worlds in the aftermath of a war in which...more

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Dec 21, 2011 Albert Yee rated it 5 of 5 stars

Gut wrenchingly sad and modestly joyful in alternating scenes. A racing crescendo bounding toward and end, but backward and forward in time. I stretched the reading of this book out too far, but still felt its grip as if I had never put it down.

It's for people with a bleak outlook on life and think that there may not really be happiness outside of leaving this world. It's for people who think that the world is comprised of half truths and lies with certainty found only in the end.

This isn't a li...more

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Feb 18, 2010 Jill rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: goodreads-firstreads

This is a Pulitzer-prize caliber, epic and gripping novel that reveals the secrets and horrors that haunt those who are affected by war: an 11-year old war refugee, an American GI serving in Korea, a Presbyterian missionary who runs the orphanage, and more. Beautifully written, it packs a strong emotional punch; it focuses on the Korea War but the events could well take place in virtually any war. For those who revel in masterful literature with deeply flawed but authentic characters or for thos...more

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Jan 20, 2013 Arthur rated it 4 of 5 stars

Chang-rae Lee's "The Surrendered" is a painful read about people who are much the worse for wars: the Korean war and WWII in Manchuria.

The first chapter, in particular, is a harrowing narrative of escape -- by June, one of he main characters -- from the North Korean Army at the outbreak of the war. Later comes the back story of Hector, an American with a painful family history. Finally, Sylvia, a missionary's wife with another painful back story -- this time at the hands of the Japanese army in...more

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Jun 27, 2012 Sophie Zhou rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

It's amazing that a book can make you squeamish. There were so many moments in this novel where I wanted to close my eyes and plug my ears. I felt as if I were watching the scenes play out in front of me. Unlike a movie, however, I could not close my eyes and block out the images - they were all ingrained in my mind. The level of detail and the precision of the words helped to paint the vivid world of the book. There was no escaping the morbid or the grotesque. Just like the characters are trapp...more

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May 16, 2012 Carl Brush rated it 5 of 5 stars

I just finished this one and am still trying to catch my breath. The Surrendered is not just a novel, but an experience. A powerful one. I read Lee’s Aloft and Native Speaker some years back, the same year he led my group at the Napa Valley Writer’s conference, whenever that was. Both are fine works, but neither approached the stature of this one.
We start with fugitives during the Korean war. A young girl, who eventually
becomes “June,” and the book’s central figure (or one of three, depending o...more I just finished this one and am still trying to catch my breath. The Surrendered is not just a novel, but an experience. A powerful one. I read Lee’s Aloft and Native Speaker some years back, the same year he led my group at the Napa Valley Writer’s conference, whenever that was. Both are fine works, but neither approached the stature of this one.
We start with fugitives during the Korean war. A young girl, who eventually
becomes “June,” and the book’s central figure (or one of three, depending on how you look at it) is fleeing from her village with her family, caught among the Chinese, the Americans, the South and the North Korean Armies. As a result of events I won’t recount here, she lands in an orphanage run by American missionaries.

Considered clinically, you might say that both she and the wife of the man who runs the place, a woman named Sylvie, are are victims of severe, untreated PTSD. However, Lee is not interested in clinical descriptions. He’s determined to delve nto the deepest emotional and visceral lives of three people whose life experiences have damaged them beyond measure. The third person of the trio is an American soldier named Hector who, once discharged, stays in Korea with the orphanage as a handyman because he can think of no special reason to return to the U.S.

As ugly as the events that have steered their lives in the direction they’ve taken, though, Lee doesn’t treat his characters as victims. He digs deeply into how their individual personalities interact with their experience, combine to shape their lives. The who is as important as the what to defining the eventual self. The book covers several decades, and its central action is a quest June undertakes as an adult, having eventually made it to the States. Cancer is consuming her, threatening to end her life at any time during her journey. The first object of her search is a lost son, one about whom she carries enormous guilt for her inability to provide the emotional support he needed throughout his life. The second is for an Italian church in a village called Solferino, the site of a horrific 1859 battle crucial to the fight for Italian unity, and also a pivotal event in the eventual formation of the Geneva Convention and the International Red Cross. However, though the history may be important, it is not central to the journey June undertakes with Hector. The quest is intensely personal, not so much historical or academic. The history is useful for an intellectual consideration of its parallels with modern events, but for the characters (and reader) its impact is direct and emotional. Like any good quest story, Lee lays many obstacles and monsters in the way of his knights errant, each one more fearsome and wrenching than the last. And when you reach that final mountaintop, you know you’ve been somewhere, though you may not be sure where you’ve arrived.

Structurally, Lee sets himself a difficult and risky pattern, and does so with extraordinary success. He spends pages and pages exploring minutely the reactions and musings of his characters, yet disposes of a couple of key events in the narrative within a few paragraphs. Ordinarily, this would go against my grain. In Surrendered, I never felt short-shrifted. He refers briefly to an event or circumstances, leading readers to believe they’ve gotten all they’re going to get, then returns unexpectedly to that time and place, and we discover that something we thought trivial is suddenly key. Or he returns to something we know as key, only to find that the character or characters have changed their view or feelings about it, and we (and perhaps they) deepen their understanding of how it has affected their lives. The emotional landscape has shifted, moved around by earthquake of fresh experience. Seems real to me, and it takes enormous language skills to capture it.

On a critique of my own work, Lee once wrote. “Remember, character, character, character.” He’s certainly followed his own advice and to the betterment of American Literature and to new insight into this period in American history--I’m talking both the Korean war and the wars that consume us now and whose traumas will reverberate down through the generations. Surrendered is a monumental achievement.

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Feb 11, 2012 Ruth rated it 3 of 5 stars

A dying Korean-american woman searches for her missing son across continents, accompanied by this guy whose relationship to her becomes more clear as their backstories are told, as well as the story of the other woman who is the link between them. It was a page-turner but I wouldn't really recommend it without reservation b/c it's so violent, large parts of it taking place in Korea during wartime. I am always torn when I'm reading things like this b/c I know it's important to acknowledge that st...more

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Jul 10, 2011 L rated it 3 of 5 stars

I feel horribly guilty rating this book only a three. It is well written, compelling, and extremely thought provoking. But it is also probably the saddest book I have ever read and because of that I can't say that I "liked" it. The Surrendered is told from the point of view of three different characters: primarily June, a young girl who fled war torn Korea with her family to become a successful antiques dealer in New York; Hector, a soldier who is responsible for burying the dead, and comes to k...more

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Jun 03, 2011 Nikitabanana rated it 3 of 5 stars

In “The Surrendered,” Chang-Rae Lee examines the ruinous effects of the Korean War on two survivors: a child, June, who loses her entire family in the flight of civilian refugees southward down the Korean peninsula, and, an American soldier, Hector Brennan, caught in the same retreat.

“The journey was nearly over,” the book begins; a curious start for a long novel that is more about endurance than endings. During this first chapter, we’re introduced to June Han, a complicated personality who we f...more In “The Surrendered,” Chang-Rae Lee examines the ruinous effects of the Korean War on two survivors: a child, June, who loses her entire family in the flight of civilian refugees southward down the Korean peninsula, and, an American soldier, Hector Brennan, caught in the same retreat.

“The journey was nearly over,” the book begins; a curious start for a long novel that is more about endurance than endings. During this first chapter, we’re introduced to June Han, a complicated personality who we first meet as June Han is a starving 11-year-old refugee fleeing military combat during the Korean War when she is separated from her seven-year-old twin siblings. By the time the book really is over, we will have come to understand June’s “diamond hard” character so completely that she’ll seem more real than some people we know. Eventually brought to an orphanage near Seoul by American soldier Hector Brennan, who is still reeling from his father’s death, June slowly recovers from her nightmarish experiences thanks to the loving attention of Sylvie Tanner, the wife of the orphanage’s minister. The three form a bizarre triad with Sylvie as the lovely but damaged object of both June’s and Hector’s affections.

These three wayfarers’ journeys first overlap in 1953, just after the end of the war, in a makeshift orphanage in the South Korean countryside not far from Seoul. The action swerves back and forth among 1930s China, 1950s Korea and New York City in 1986, when June, battling stomach cancer at age 47, is shuttering her successful Manhattan antiques shop and preparing for yet another journey. With her illness closing in on her, June plans to fly to Italy for a final reunion with her son, Nicholas, whom she raised alone while stoically building her business. Nicholas departed hastily for Europe after his high school graduation eight years ago and has contacted his mother only for money since. For thorny reasons, June decides she must enlist the help of Hector, whom she hasn’t seen in decades to help her find Nicholas and convince him to come back home.

Author Chang-Rae Lee’s handling of the back-stories is extraordinary. The opening sequence with June fleeing South is gripping; Hector’s adolescence in upstate New York looking after his bar-brawling father is merely ok, but his encounter with a young Korean prisoner is riveting; and Sylvie’s violent introduction to love and betrayal is incandescent, far and away the strongest chapter in the book. Moving forward, the scenes in the mission, interspersed throughout the book, are generally well told. However, the scenes set in the 80s seem flat. The main problem with the book is that compared to June, Hector and Sylvie are just not as compelling. Sylvie, despite her harrowing childhood, congeals into a cliché, a tarnished beauty from some lesser-known Maugham story who speaks in stiff, romance-novel sentences. And Hector has only one note from the beginning. Named after the epic hero, his only miraculous quality seems to be that his liver has somehow managed to remain intact after decades of compulsive drinking. Contrast this with June, who blazes with obstinate life at every point of her journey: on a Korean road southward as a refugee child, where she ate mud to keep from dying of thirst; decades later in her oncologist’s office, where she wrests control of her cancer treatment; and in the book’s final scenes in Italy, where even here, hazy with morphine, she insists on stumbling forward. There isn’t an ounce of charm in June, but her relentlessness always feels genuine.

In tracing the long-term effects of warfare, Chang-Rae Lee has a powerful theme. But it is difficult to maintain interest in damaged characters who, even through no fault of their own, are only half functioning as human beings. Sylvie is addicted to drugs; Hector is a compulsive drinker; June is so far gone in her sickness that her actions are unpredictable, and even in the orphanage it appears that her moral compass is damaged or missing. They are all half-people at best. Although we sympathize with their tragedy, and even discern glimmers of goodness among the psychic rubble, they make poor companions on a long journey to a place that is not very meaningful anyway.
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Feb 22, 2011 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars

There are a few prized novels in memory that ransacked me raw and bare while simultaneously enveloping me whole and full. This is a glittering example of one, a slow burn of a book that ignites slowly, gradually, like kindling around a giant bole. For the first half of the book, I admit, I wasn't seduced. I wasn't taken or thrown or fiercely engaged. For approximately 200 pages I held on ambivalently. Even my reader's body language was telling--the pages at arm's length, the angle of my body twi...more There are a few prized novels in memory that ransacked me raw and bare while simultaneously enveloping me whole and full. This is a glittering example of one, a slow burn of a book that ignites slowly, gradually, like kindling around a giant bole. For the first half of the book, I admit, I wasn't seduced. I wasn't taken or thrown or fiercely engaged. For approximately 200 pages I held on ambivalently. Even my reader's body language was telling--the pages at arm's length, the angle of my body twisted away from the book. I was impatient for a gainful lift-off. I was poised to relinquish it for another. I needed a release, a cry, a laugh, a scream of my own.

But there were embers flaring below the text. I trusted in the story's elemental power, despite my lack of commitment, even though I wasn't yet appreciably moved. I respected its lean, stark, clean, atmospheric prose, and the elegant construction, but I didn't know if it was gathering momentum or dust. Was the story going to progress in one plaintive note? Fortunately, I stayed with it, because once it does reach that point of critical mass (about halfway, give or take several dozen pages), it sears you with its ferocity. The narrative tension accelerates; the symbols and motifs are in full bloom; and the raw power of this epic story is manifest.

THE SURRENDERED is now a treasured book for me. And, although it is austere--OK, bleak--it is not relentlessly dreary as a reading experience. There is an exciting current of electricity that carries you to astonishing emotional depths. It has contours, corners, cusps.

I don't want to tell readers too much, and I urge you not to read reviews that give away major plot points and milestones in this powerful journey of redemption. The experience of turning the pages in discovery is paramount to its visceral, immediate pleasure. But even if you have already read bits about these characters or circumstances, nothing can remove the lingering exaltation once you close the final pages. This is a tour de force that is impossible to shake off. The characters are fleshed out and organic in every aspect of being. They are coiled, agonized individuals, but what makes them so tremendous is their brazen tenacity. They are cultural outsiders, alienated and severed, but savagely resilient. They are singular, wretched creatures who infinitely penetrate the reader--cruel but sympathetic, elusive and yet naked, authentically human.

Three lives intersect in 1953 in this story that spans fifty years in backward/forward time sequences, from the 1930's to the 1980's. June Han is a refugee from the Korean War when she is brought to an orphanage in the early 1950's. By the age of 11, she had already suffered devastating adversity, enduring periodic starvation and witnessing unspeakable violence. Hector Brennan is a benighted ex-GI from Ilion, New York, a damaged young man who is already shorn of any noble ideals, depraved and sodden with whoring and drink, and who comes to the orphanage to work the physically strenuous jobs of construction and repair. Sylvie Tanner is the comely and mercurial wife of the Reverend Ames Tanner. She is the daughter of missionaries and is accustomed to being uprooted and exposed to shocking conditions. Sylvie and her husband oversee and teach at the orphanage with dedication and generous benevolence.

Sylvie has a haunting past and is drawn to June's gripping isolation; Hector's derelict history and provocative good looks are equal burdens; June is terrified and truculent, insatiable, greedy for Sylvie's maternal love; all three are hollowed out and tormented. Through Lee's brilliant and tightly controlled narrative, the past is gradually revealed--brick by brick--masterfully, woven into and through the story as it takes place thirty years hence. At this future juncture, June is searching for her prodigal son, which is the seed for the redemptive action of the book and its germane themes of identity, love, and dislocation.

"War is a stern teacher," Hector's father quoted from Thucydides, from his perch at the bar. In every pore of this story, from the desolate, burnt, and barren fields of Korea, to the grey skies and filthy streets of Hector's seedy, combative youth, to the shabby, brittle, and frail hope of the orphanage, war communicates its harsh lessons.

This is a shattering, phenomenal masterpiece. If someone asked me to describe my response to this novel, I would say, "I am undone, I am complete." A+ (less)

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Jan 04, 2011 Linda C rated it 3 of 5 stars

Well. Hard to say exactly what I thought about this book. OK-- I thought many parts were beautifully written. I also thought it was way too long, yet the character development was way too thin. For having so many pages, the author didn't seem to know what to do with them. Three stars is maybe a little harsh, but the book wasn't worthy of four, so, without a half star option, three it is.

The book started out strongly-- you really felt that you were in the rice paddies, on the train, starving with...more Well. Hard to say exactly what I thought about this book. OK-- I thought many parts were beautifully written. I also thought it was way too long, yet the character development was way too thin. For having so many pages, the author didn't seem to know what to do with them. Three stars is maybe a little harsh, but the book wasn't worthy of four, so, without a half star option, three it is.

The book started out strongly-- you really felt that you were in the rice paddies, on the train, starving with June and her family. The sections of the book set in Korea and China were definitely the best parts of the book. Unfortunately, the book jumped from past to present and the present day sections weren't as well written. They had "issues", if you will.

I couldn't believe that Hector's experiences were so damaging that he became this shell of a man. I just didn't get it. Many people survive worse and go on to have some kind of meaningful life. Hector's barroom experiences, relationship with Dora (Dora herself, in fact), relationship with the Korean friend, etc. just went on much too long. None of it was that interesting and could have been covered in a dozen pages instead of a dozen chapters. I truly didn't care about the Korean friend, the money the friend owed to the dying mobster, the mobster's dead daughter-- none of it had any relationship to the story except as background on Hector.

In a similar vein, while June's war experiences were horrible, they didn't fully explain her adult actions-- in particular, her relationship with her son. Speaking of the son, it was difficult to believe that a 22 year old would leave for Europe, never to be seen again. Sure, June wasn't a perfect mother, but she wasn't that bad, and there was nothing to really explain why Nicholas vanished, except that the author needed him to disappear to move the story forward.

Also, June had this husband that we knew nothing about, except a couple of brief mentions about the marriage and his death. Since he sounded like a normal guy, I was troubled by the fact that he never met his stepson, or seemed to care that his wife had a vanished son. None of it was believable.

Lastly, there was the "book." I kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the book to be explained. What was it about this book that sent a dying woman to end her life in a small Itialian town? But at the end of the day, it was just a book, loved by Sylvie because it had come from her parents, and loved by June because it came from Sylvie. Perhaps if June had given it her her son, he would never have left for Europe. Oops, then we wouldn't have had a reason to go to Europe to look for him and there goes half of the story. You know, maybe that wouldn't have been a bad thing.(less)

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Dec 16, 2010 Dee rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. There were parts of this book that were so horrific and unsparing, I will never forget them. The depiction of the Korean war thru June's experience is one of the most violent (and sad) scenes I have ever read and Lee continues his brutal descriptions of war in his description of Hector's experience with the young bugler and Sylvie's terrifying experience in Manchuria during the Japanese invasion. This part of the book is riveting and unforgettable.

But the story goes off on a tangent with June s...more

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Nov 10, 2010 Mary Ellen rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a book I'd expected to love, but didn't. I would give it 3.5 stars, were that possible. The prose is often lovely, but other elements of the book are weak.

Structure: The novel bounces back and forth among points of view as well as historical periods: 1950s Korea, 1980s New York and New Jersey, 1930s China.... It begins with 11-year old June and her younger siblings, refugees from fighting in the Korean War. This chapter was one of the most compelling in the book. The next chapter brings...more

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May 28, 2010 Eugenia Kim added it

What happens to life after you survive the atrocities and randomness of war? Chang-rae Lee examines the deep intricacies of this question and its ramifications in THE SURRENDURED, portraying three survivors (Korean War, China-Japan War) whose lives mesh at an orphanage somewhere in South Korea after liberation. From that common crossroad, the lives of Sylvie, a missionary wife, Hector, a G.I., and June, a Korean orphan, are forever intertwined, shadowed by pervasive doom pitted against the human...more

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May 08, 2010 Kelly Hager rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is about June, Hector and Sylvie, who are connected by their experiences during the Korean War and the atrocities each experienced.

This book jumps back and forth in time and from person to person, so it can be confusing. (If you pay attention, you'll be fine, but I'd recommend not reading this when you're tired or distracted.)

This is not a happy book. It's not as depressing as you'd think, but there are times when I had to make myself stop reading and walk away and do something else fo...more

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Apr 05, 2010 Alice Meloy rated it 5 of 5 stars

To what extent do we surrender to the trajectories of past experiences? When we move from a place of belonging to a place of not-belonging, what happens to our psyches?
June Han Singer, successful antiques dealer in New York City in the mid-1980s, is dying, but she has some unfinished business to resolve. She tracks down Hector, a hard-drinking janitor in New Jersey, and pays him to help her find her prodigal son. June and Hector have a shared past, and that past gradually emerges in this skillfu...more

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Mar 02, 2010 Felice rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who read Ian McEwan, Amy Tan, Monica Ali or Kiran Desai

I think I have read one of the novels that will be on everyone's top ten list next fall, The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee. Are you thinking that given Lee's track record: Native Speaker, A Gesture Life and Aloft that I am going out on a tiny, tiny limb? Well I would agree with you if The Surrendered was the spare, wonderful portraits that those novels were, but it is not. Surrenderd is a Grand Scale novel. It is a quest for redemption, a search for survivors looking for forgiveness..

The novel i...more I think I have read one of the novels that will be on everyone's top ten list next fall, The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee. Are you thinking that given Lee's track record: Native Speaker, A Gesture Life and Aloft that I am going out on a tiny, tiny limb? Well I would agree with you if The Surrendered was the spare, wonderful portraits that those novels were, but it is not. Surrenderd is a Grand Scale novel. It is a quest for redemption, a search for survivors looking for forgiveness..

The novel is told in flashback and that works perfectly for this book. As you meet the characters you are charmed by their imperfections. You fall in love and dread the revelations to come. June is a Korean War survivor. At age 11 she and her family were forced by the War to abandon their home. They struggled to make it to safety at a relatives house but along the way June lost her family one by one Hector is also a survivor of the Korean War. He was an American GI immersed in the carnage until discharged. Blaming himself for the death of his Father back home and not having anywhere to go he stayed in Korea. June and Hector's lives intersect for the first time at a Korean orphanage. There they meet Sylvie. She and her minister husband run the orphanage. Sylvie has her own tortured past having witnessed the Japanese kill her missionary parents in 1934 Manchuria. All three people have already survived horrendous experiences leaving them more damaged then they realize. This leads to a time bomb relationship between the three characters.

I am not going to go beyond this small explanation of plot. This has given you the most basic of starting points. I could go on to describe more of the storyline but that list would do nothing to convey the vivid intensity of those same events written by Lee's elegant pen and broad range. My list would come off as melodrama whereas that kind of storytelling is completely removed from this novel.

I have been a fan of Chang-Rae Lee for years and from the moment I heard he had a new book coming out I was excited (thank you Penguin USA for the reader's copy!) to read it. The Surrendered is a whole new start to Lee's already accolade filled career. He has produced something with all the masterful control of his earlier introspective novels and added the complex and universal themes of survival, heroism and the psychological destruction's of war. Lee has taken his character's 30 year heartbreaking road to redemption and created an engrossing and affecting book. The Surrendered is a big, ambitious and triumphantly well written novel.
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Dec 05, 2009 Kellyreaderofbooks rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Surrendered starts off with a young Korean girl named June trying to make her way to her uncle's house during the Korean War. She's been newly orphaned, and at the age of eleven is now the sole caretaker for her seven-year-old twin siblings. The Surrendered is also the story of Hector, a young American man serving in the army during the War. And then there's Sylvie, a middle-aged American woman who (along with her husband, Ames) is in charge of a Korean orphange right after the war. There's...more

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May 24, 2012 Mark rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: almost-won-a-pulitzer

War is hell, a fact that is on display in nearly every war-related piece of fiction that does not somehow involve John Wayne. Less often explored is the toll that war takes on the civilians who are in the affected areas. Still less often explored is the Korean War, which is important to the plot here.

The Surrendered could have filled a void and been one of those books that, while a work of fiction, kind of opens your eyes to something you never really thought about. It would have been this excep...more War is hell, a fact that is on display in nearly every war-related piece of fiction that does not somehow involve John Wayne. Less often explored is the toll that war takes on the civilians who are in the affected areas. Still less often explored is the Korean War, which is important to the plot here.

The Surrendered could have filled a void and been one of those books that, while a work of fiction, kind of opens your eyes to something you never really thought about. It would have been this except for the fact that it is so full of depressing things that you can't do anything except ask, "Was all that really necessary?"

I have read depressing books before and liked them. The Painted Bird, for instance, was a total gut punch from start to finish, but it never felt manipulative, to me. The problem with The Surrendered is that every last detail that is filled in is depressing. You can't take it seriously after a while.

Let's look at the three principal characters for illustration.

Character #1: a war orphan. This is fine. Her father is a suspected Communist supporter and is probably killed. OK. Brother conscripted, captured and reconscripted by the North. Mother and older sister are blown up by a bomb as they shelter in a military truck (which bomber flyover was the only thing that stopped an attempted rape). She has two younger siblings who end up in her orbit after this. They try to hitch a train all the way to the south towards some vaguely-remembered relatives. A bump in the rail knocks both off the side and each separately has a limb amputated by the train and they die.

In the part of the story that takes place in 1986, she has grown up to be abandoned by the son she raised as a single mother, she has been widowed by the husband she found late in life and she is dying of stomach cancer.

Character #2: Former soldier. He only joins the Army because his father, kind of a drunk, drowns in a canal after falling, drunk, into it. The character, despite being underage, was his father's drinking buddy/minder but left early one night to bang a war widow, and on this night his father died. This is why he enlists later when the Korean conflict erupts. He encounters the re-conscripted brother of #1 (he doesn't know this at the time, of course) who thanks to some cruelty of his fellow soldiers is pushed off a cliff; #2 tries to save him but #1 would rather die, pulling a grenade and holding it just long enough to get away.

Later, we discover that as a boy he was in a choir at a Catholic church until the priest tried to abuse him. This is when I stopped reading; this detail on top of all the rest was too much for me to take seriously.

Character #3: The wife of a missionary priest who comes to run a Korean orphanage. #1 in her orphaned years is drawn to #3, and this orphanage is where #2 comes to work after he gets kicked out of the Army for various misdeeds. (After the incident described above he is reassigned to the Graves Unit, meaning he works - with black soldiers, mostly - with dead bodies). Her parents were killed horribly, while she watched, by Japanese soldiers who were invading China (her parents also being missionaries), and she later became an opium addict.

There is misery for all who are swept up by war, including the forgotten; for some, there is nothing but misery. But this book is just piling on at every turn. There is no comic relief, hardly any kind of levity at all. Every detail filled in is maximum suffering for its characters, even the throwaway details like "new sort-of girlfriend is singing so character #2 sings along and thinks about how he used to be in a choir." What a mess. You can't get emotionally involved in a story that is transparently and gratuitously trying to tug every heart string at every possible little turn. Stay away!(less)

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Nov 01, 2010 Meaghan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arc, read-but-unowned

I got this book as an ARC from Penguin books. I have to say that I really enjoyed reading this book. It is told from the point of view of 3 people: June, Hector and Sylvie. The book goes back and forth from present time to the past. June is a young girl who lived through the Korean war and ends up at an orphanage and eventually grows up to have a boy and lives in America. In the present part of the book June is actually very sick with cancer. Hector is an American soldier during the war and even...more

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Apr 05, 2012 Patrick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is one of the best books I have ever read. I think this is book is on par with Roth's Human Stain and American Pastoral. Each word and sentence in this book was beautifully written. I love his use of the fire that killed the Tanners and the innocent Min as a metaphor for the destructive elements of misdirected over consuming passion. While June started the all consuming destructive fire because Sylvie spurned her love, it was stroked by Hector selfish passionate love for Sylvie despite her...more

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Feb 15, 2010 Jodi rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Jodi by: First Reads

Shelves: first-reads, books-set-in-asia

Thanks to First Reads, I received a free copy of this book to read! This book gripped me right from the beginning with the story of June and her orphaned younger brother and sister! Such a tragic story! Then the book moved back and forth in time between June, Sylvia and Hector who all met up at an orphanage in Korea. All three of the main characters have a sad life and as their stories intertwine, their stories continue to be sad. I wish I could have read more about how June got to the orphanage...more

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Feb 08, 2013 Larry rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Had I stopped to rate this novel at the halfway point I'd have said it went off the chart, beyond a mere five stars. Such rich prose, heart-rending actions, characters I wanted to reach out to embrace, each one damaged by war and circumstance. Then, all of a sudden, the author slammed on the brakes and, just like one of his characters' driving habits, dawdled along for the next 200 pages, throwing in backstory after backstory for every character we encounter, including in one case the backstory...more

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Jun 07, 2012 Megan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was certainly everything the other reviews said, gripping, intense, a page-turned, heart-wrenching and compellingly written. And once I had read the first chapter, I couldn't wait to plough through the story. But my interest and passion for the book faded as the stories jumped from time period, character and even narrator not only from one chapter to the next, but within chapters. 100 pages, new characters were still be introduced with significant depth, only to disappear later. In a w...more

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Nov 26, 2011 Michelle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, historical

It’s the feel horrible book of the year! I’m not one who minds a bit of tragedy and/or darkness in a novel, but this takes it to a whole new level. There is no redemption for the characters. People die, often senselessly always brutally. And every plot point ends in sweeping disaster. Despite all this, it’s not even the atrocities of Very Horrible Events (take your pick...) it’s the atrocities of everyday kind of living that are gut-wrenching. Some of the most heartbreaking scenes for me were no...more

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May 12, 2010 Jennifer (JC-S) rated it 4 of 5 stars

‘She was running for the train.’

June Han has forged a life thousands of miles from her birthplace: she has built a business in New York, borne a child, and survived a husband. Thirty years after her escape from war-ravaged Korea, and dying, it is time for her to confront aspects of her past. June’s story in Korea involves two others: Hector Brennan, an American soldier who saved June’s, and Sylvie Tanner a missionary’s wife, whom they both adored.

This is a complex novel, which shifts between Kor...more

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Apr 05, 2010 Geri rated it 4 of 5 stars

I had good feelings about this book as soon as I started it. Actually..I had good feelings about it before I started it. Don't ask me why..it was just a feeling. I liked the thought of reading about three so very different characters who's lives would touch each other for almost 30 years...I was curious about a story which would span continents. I was not let down...my feelings turned out to be correct...to a degree.

Surrendered...what was surrendered?

June. Orphaned at 11 and left to survive on...more I had good feelings about this book as soon as I started it. Actually..I had good feelings about it before I started it. Don't ask me why..it was just a feeling. I liked the thought of reading about three so very different characters who's lives would touch each other for almost 30 years...I was curious about a story which would span continents. I was not let down...my feelings turned out to be correct...to a degree.

Surrendered...what was surrendered?

June. Orphaned at 11 and left to survive on her own in the middle of the Korean War. Left to endure,witness,survive and remember untold horrors which only war can bring.

Hector. An American boy who grew up too fast. A boy who assumed manhood,responsiblity,sexuality and guilt at too young an age. Hector who carries all of this with him to the battlefields of Korea.

Sylvie. The only daughter of a devout missionary couple who travels the globe, under ofttimes difficult circumstances, to remote and dangerous places. Sylvie who seems at once both innocent and unusually aware. Sylvie who has her innocence violently ripped away at the age of 14.

In The Surrendered, Chang-Rae Lee takes these three people,having given us glimpses of their troubled backgrounds, and puts them together in a postwar orphanage in Korea. Their interactions were complex and yet at the same time predictable. Thirty years later, Hector and June are again together. Lee gives us even more insight into what transpired at the orphanage. He gives us more insight into why each character acts and reacts as he or she does.

At the end of The Surrendered I sat and pondered about whether or not my initial feelings about the book were in fact correct. Was this a good read? I had swayed throughout the reading of the book from being enthralled to being bored. I was often tempted to set it aside..and yet would pick it up again. It came to me that the story,for me, was not just one of three people who met under adverse conditions during a war and impacted each other's lives...it was a story of three individuals who's lives were impacted by circumstances. Not just by immediate circumstances but by the circumstances of the past as well as circumstances of the future. And how violent,excessive, horrific events in our early lives can be so forceful that we carry the effects of these events with us forever. We in fact surrender to them. Even if we do not realize that we are carrying them...even if we appear to have survived...did we really? What if who we really meant to be was lost...what if was surrendered...in order to survive?

June, Hector and Sylvie are the surrendered.

Read this book...I am so very glad I did.

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Dec 28, 2011 Beth Anne rated it 2 of 5 stars

ebook.

this book depressed me. it was full of awful characters, who did awful things, with awful results. nothing redeemed these characters. as the stories unfolded, and you found out the true history of each of their lives, i disliked them even more.

it's hard to like a book where you dislike everyone.

true, i had some feelings of sadness for both june and hector (not so much sylvie)...at different times in the novel...it didn't overshadow the looming iniquitousness that i felt lived inside each o...more

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Aug 13, 2010 Anne rated it 3 of 5 stars

This one was a conundrum. The protagonist was a little more de-centered than in other Lee works, but still, everyone in this amplified arena was driven by a secret, or secrets, as per Lee's MO. Also, everyone very alienated. This is the first crack at a "world historical" story he's taken on(to my knowledge), as it begins at the tail end of the Korean War, with mass death, chaos, orphaned children. It's about the inner lives, tangential intensities that take over, and missed connections between...more

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Jul 29, 2010 Rose rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is heart-breaking and poignant. The protagonists, June, Hector, and Sylvie share a parallel fate after living through the destruction of war. In Surrendered, Chang Rae Lee shows us that the casualties of war are the ones who survive. They move through life among the living, indifferent, numb and almost soulless. June, emotionally unavailable, has an estranged relationship with her son. Hector, an alcoholic, meaninglessly drifts through life as a loner. And Sylvie, damaged and lost, see...more
This book is heart-breaking and poignant. The protagonists, June, Hector, and Sylvie share a parallel fate after living through the destruction of war. In Surrendered, Chang Rae Lee shows us that the casualties of war are the ones who survive. They move through life among the living, indifferent, numb and almost soulless. June, emotionally unavailable, has an estranged relationship with her son. Hector, an alcoholic, meaninglessly drifts through life as a loner. And Sylvie, damaged and lost, seeks for redemption in her missionary work. Hector, grieving over the death of his father hastily joins the military during the war in Korea. It is there, where he collides with the stubborn orphan June and the reckless missionary wife Sylvie. Hector is a man of perpetual pain. His character is passive but ill-fated therefore does not have much control over the course of his life. June is bullheaded and responds to adversity by shaping her own future, no matter how victims she leaves behind. And Sylvie masks her emotional scars and flaws through her missionary work. However, what they all have in common is that no matter how they channel their efforts, there is always a feeling of never-ending emptiness and loss. As described in the feeling of hunger by June’s character throughout the book.
Lee shows us the ugliness of war and how it impacts the course of many lives. His focus is not so much on the War in Korea but how the main characters are witnesses to each other’s lives affected by war. My feeling about the book is that even though the characters anticipate the tragic path to their demise, they do nothing to change the course, until it is too late. However, I feel this is the meaning to Surrendered. In June’s case, she watches her son cry himself to sleep and know that she should reach out to comfort him but does not. Hector, who drinks himself to waste know that this will be the end of him but does not stop. And Sylvie, indulges in an addiction that she know will ruin her marriage and the life she worked so hard to build, but does not stop. To surrender to a supposed unfavorable force. Lee tells us the true story of the Korean War and the invasion of China by Japan, and it is not what we learn in a history class, but the story of lives that were impacted by war.
This is the first Chang Rae Lee book that I’ve read. His storytelling is honest, raw, and inspires one to care deeply about the characters. I look forward to reading more of his work. Beautiful novel.
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What are some things you came away with?	1	10	Oct 13, 2012 08:21pm
Muddled Feelings for Main Characters?	1	13	May 13, 2012 08:44pm

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