Chang-rae Lee's three previous novels have moved him into the forefront of contemporary literature. Heavily and justifiably praised by all the traditional mavens of literary opinions, he has won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Literary Award among others. The Surrendered has received starred advance reviews.
The reader meets the central characters in the first chapter, a marvelous evocation of war-torn Korea. It is 1950 and the Japanese army is roaring mercilessly through Korea. Eleven-year-old June Han is a refugee fleeing atop a train with her younger brother and sister during a frigid Korean winter. Only June survives and at her nearly last breath she is rescued by Hector Brennan, a young US soldier dejected by the brutality he has witnessed. He leads her to an orphanage run by an American missionary and his beautiful wife, Sylvie Tanner, a woman who harbors a secret.
The actions of these central characters at the orphanage haunt their lives through three decades to a time when June and Hector search for a young man who is missing. The story of this quest is told in flashbacks and multiple narrators. Too often, the transition from the present to the past and back is less than clear, creating difficulty in following the narrative flow, which wanders among 1950 Korea, New York and Italy in the '80s, and China in the '30s.
The inspiration for The Surrendered came from an incident in the life of Lee's father. A refugee during the Korean War, his younger brother was killed while they were riding on top of a train. Most of the description in the book is fictionalized since his father provided only the bare details, yet the sense of loss his father must have felt is explored in a central theme of the novel. One has to surrender to forces beyond one's control as Fate will determine the arc of a person's life. Hector (who happens to be from Ilion, New York), Fate, and a journey (odyssey) refer to key themes in their allusions to classical Greek literature. A major theme revolves around the impact of war, including guilt, bitterness, and confusion. Finally, as if Fate had stepped in, a sense of silent fortitude endures.
The inspiration for The Surrendered came from an incident in the life of Lee's father. A refugee during the Korean War, his younger brother was killed while they were riding on top of a train. Most of the description in the book is fictionalized since his father provided only the bare details, yet the sense of loss his father must have felt is explored in a central theme of the novel. One has to surrender to forces beyond one's control as Fate will determine the arc of a person's life. Hector (who happens to be from Ilion, New York), Fate, and a journey (odyssey) refer to key themes in their allusions to classical Greek literature. A major theme revolves around the impact of war, including guilt, bitterness, and confusion. Finally, as if Fate had stepped in, a sense of silent fortitude endures.
This sprawling and unfocused novel, Lee's fourth and most ambitious, has the mood of a literary masterpiece, but it falls just short. There is beautifully written prose, poetic in its imagery and emotion, but the language does not always contribute to the movement of plot or development of character. There are memorable characters, but only a limited number are completely rounded and for whom one feels a sense of investment in their fictional lives. Despite these quibbles, it remains a satisfying read, certain to be greeted with enthusiasm by Chang-rae Lee's legion of fans. And, perhaps one could argue that the seeming disorganization is a grand metaphor for the unease that war so often inflicts on both its participants and its victims.
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