The Surrendered

This powerful novel of the horrors of war and the sorrows of love takes place in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation, war torn Korea, and NYC and Italy in the mid 1980s. June (Han) Singer is nearing the end of her unsuccessful battle with stomach cancer. She has survived the horrors of the Korean War, including the loss of her entire family and those whom she loved the most, and her unyielding determination, combined with a necessary streak of meanness, allowed her to become a successful antiques dealer in New York City. She refuses to die until she finds her only son, who is traveling throughout Europe but has not contacted her in several months. She learns that he is in trouble, and seeks the help of Hector Brennan, a handsome show more womanizer and alcoholic who rescued the teenaged June while he was stationed in Korea. Their lives remained connected during the years that Hector worked at the orphanage that housed June, which was run by the Reverend Tanner and his wife Sylvie. The impossible and tragic love that the flawed Sylvie, the handsome Hector and the fiery June share consumes all of them, and continues to affect their lives years later when June and Hector meet, for the last time.

I found The Surrendered to be a captivating novel, although one key incident in the story was a bit incredulous, and Hector's character and actions were difficult for me to understand and appreciate. This is a very good novel about isolation, identity and memory in the midst of war and unfulfilled love, and is definitely a recommended read. show less

A large and ambitious novel, The Surrendered is a portrait of three lives irrevocably changed by war. It spans three decades and as many continents, but its greatest feats of imagination exist in the minds and hearts of its downtrodden characters. June, perhaps the central figure, was a young girl at the onset of the Korean war – in the first few pages of The Surrendered we see the terrible loss of her entire family. She is rescued from starvation by Hector, an American soldier who has also suffered from the violence and brutality of war. He takes them both to an orphanage where June finds shelter and he finds work. And there they both find Sylvie, the wife of a missionary running the orphanage. She is haunted by horrifying memories show more of her childhood, when she watched her missionary parents die at the hands of the Japanese in Manchuria. These three develop relationships that grow more complex and entangled as the years pass.

Thirty years later, Sylvie is dead. June is dying of stomach cancer in New York, and her final wish is to find her estranged son, Nicholas, who disappeared in Europe years earlier. She enlists Hector, now an alcoholic janitor living in New Jersey (and also, unbeknownst to him, Nicholas’s father), to help in her search. The narrative moves back and forth in time, each chapter leading us closer to an understanding of what war and the passage of time have done to this trio of individuals. While Sylvie and Hector have struggled through their lives, alternately trying to forget the past and atone for it, it is June who develops into the most mesmerizing and realistic character, stubborn and calculating and determined to survive at any cost. show less

"The Surrendered" is an exploration of war, survival and the human spirit. It starts out with June, a child orphaned by the Korean war, struggling to get her two remaining siblings to safety in the midst of the war. It's a vast novel that intertwines June's story with that of a missionary and his troubled wife Sylvie, and an American GI, Hector, who tries in his own way to save June.

The historical aspect alone is quite interesting, and the author has done his research. This is a vast novel, coming in at over 500 pages, but it's worth the commitment. Each of the characters' lives echo the impact of war in different and fascinating ways, and their interplay with each other is at times tragic and at others healing. The author pulls no show more punches, and many scenes are fairly graphic but there is a purpose for this--he wants the reader to see the harsh reality of war and the way in which it irrevocably changes its survivors. As a therapist I appreciated how accurately the author captured what PTSD can look like. Hector's character with his survivor guilt was particularly touching. This is a novel that's frequently depressing but also uplifting in places, and well worth the read. show less

If you need Zoloft to get through the day and don't want to increase your dosage, run, don't walk, away from this book. It is about as far from a light, fun read as a book can be; the “serious literature” category is more apt.

The story grabbed me at chapter one. That chapter is about a little girl, June, who is trying to escape the horrors of the Korean war in 1950 and save her siblings as well as herself. Chapter two is the same person, sharp-edged and not very likeable, in 1986 New York, preparing for a journey to find her son. Intermingled are the stories of June, an American soldier (Hector), missionaries turned social workers, orphanages, lovers, loss, and betrayal.

While there are very dramatic events that take place, this is show more not an action story. It is a story about damaged souls going on to damage other souls. As is said of Hector, “Someone could easily argue that all of him had spoiled, even as his physique remained remarkably sound, that a special scan of his abstract being would show an unsettling result, revealing a soul neither bountiful nor spare but used up, right down to nothing.” A minor character who especially touched me was Dora, a hard-shelled, vulnerable barfly who might finally find some happiness.

The book bogged down a bit for me in the middle part, just a little too much description of that period in the story, but in the end, I was very glad I read it. The story is very dark but thoughtful and beautifully written. show less

The war that rages within each of us as we strive to sublimate feelings of shame and unworthiness drives this novel. Periodically awkward jumps through decades and settings drive the primary storyline of June and Hector, battered survivors of the Korean War. The novel begins with two threads set in the metropolitan NY area. June, a Korean immigrant in her late 40's a Korean immigrant, is dying of cancer and is on a quest to find her troubled, missing son in Europe and unite him with Hector, the father he never knew. Hector is punishing himself daily for crime of surviving not only the war, but a devastating affair with Sylvia, an American missionary who ran an orphanage for displaced children in Korea. Sylvia, tortured by her own show more memories as a child survivor of Japanese torture in Manchuria, is the sun around whom both June and Hector's stories orbit. And so this novel includes a thick layer of flashback that belongs to Sylvia, a woman long-dead in terms of the novel's timeline, but still too much alive for June and Hector to bear. Lee has true talent for infusing his characters with loneliness, while also allowing tendrils of their loneliness to intertwine in ways that feel simultaneously savage and achingly beautiful. Though love hope and love occasionally flare to bonfire strength within this novel, Lee is thankfully not a romantic who packages these emotions as off-the-shelf cures for our private wars. Instead, love and hope are pain relievers for those who surrender themselves to the act of living. show less

The Surrendered is a book that is full of life, love and death. Every character has experienced some sort of loss through war. In the story, the main characters June, Sylvie and Hector are all left completely on their own and find themselves blindly reaching out for, if not love, then some sort of redemption and acceptance. The tragedy of the book is that no one completely finds it. The only way they are saved is through their own death. The surrendered was beautifully written with heartwrenching imagery. Lee was remorseless in writing this novel, keeping nothing at bay and showing the reader the stark reality of life. Lee put this story in the center and aftermath of the Korean War. War brings out the worst in humanity as a whole and show more creates a stunning backdrop for the emotions of the heart, but I truly believe that this story could have been told just as effectively without the aid of war and destruction. What I found beautiful and compelling about the Surrendered is that Lee accurately depicted what lies deep within our hearts in various forms (fear, guilt of some kind, love, passion, obsession).
Hector was by far the most interesting character in that Lee created an immortal being. For some unknown crime that he had committed in the past it seems that the author was forcing him to live forever acting as a witness to the demise of all the other main characters. Lee first alluded to Hector’s myth-like status in his name…not giving him the name of a divine god but the name of a hero who was immortal only in the shape of his name. Hector was rightly named in that his predecessor seemed to be cursed with death and war, except Hector’s predecessor is given the gift of death, while Hector remains. Throughout the book, Lee tells of Hector’s reckless and often times dangerous habits…habits that in real life no one would be able to survive, but Hector does in a very magical way. What is even more heartbreaking is the tragedy that surrounds Hector…death follows every being that Hector comes to care for. I think it would have been very interesting if Lee had made allusions to death himself when describing Hector. Lee is such an imaginative and creative writer that he would have come up with something both eerie and beautiful.
The only character who actually struggles for life is June. Orphaned by the Korean War, June never stops fighting for more time, even if she is the only one left to experience it. Even though she is cold and sometimes cruel, I couldn’t keep from sympathizing and aching for what she had experienced at such a young age. show less

I received an advance reader edition of this book way back in 2010, and finally got around to reading it.  I think the title, the cover, and the length (467 pages) intimidated me.  I'm sorry I waited so long.  The Surrendered was quite good.

The book takes place mostly in 1986 and 1953.  In 1986, June, a Korean-American, is trying to find Hector, the father of her son Nicholas.  She in turn wants him to help her find Nicholas in Europe, as June is dying of cancer.  In 1953, June is fourteen and an orphan at the Korean orphanage where Hector, an American Korean War vet, works.  The orphanage is run by a pastor named Ames Tanner and his wife Sylvie, a daughter of slain missionaries with a tragic past.  The story revolves around show more June, Hector, and Sylvie, with flashbacks to 1950 and 1934 to give their back stories.

Perhaps because of the post-Korean War setting, this book kept my interest and kept me engaged.  June left her home at age 11 when the Communists invaded Korea, losing her parents, brothers, and sisters along the way.  Hector grew up a brawler and served in the graves unit (collecting the dead) in the war, sticking around afterwards working odd jobs in the orphanage.  They both idolize Sylvie, who witnessed the brutal death of her parents in Manchuria and has not been quite the same since.

The story is bleak and depressing, but intriguing enough to keep my interest until the end.  The book was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

© Amanda Pape - 2018

This advance reader edition will be passed on to someone else to enjoy. show less