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    The Surrendered
    The Surrendered
    The Surrendered
    Audiobook17 hours

    The Surrendered

    Written by Chang-rae Lee

    Narrated by James Yaegashi

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    PEN/Hemingway Award-winning, best-selling author Chang-rae Lee delivers a "completely engrossing story of great complexity and tragedy" (Library Journal). At the end of the Korean War, the lives of orphan June Han and American soldier Hector Brennan collide. Thirty years later, they meet again and are forced to come to terms with the secrets of their devastating past. "Lee's masterful fourth novel bursts with drama and human anguish as it documents the ravages and indelible effects of war ."-Publishers Weekly, starred review
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 23, 2010
    ISBN9781449808693
    The Surrendered
    Author

    Chang-rae Lee

    Chang-rae Lee (1965), nació en Corea del Sur y emigró a los Estados Unidos con su familia cuando tenía tres años. Su primera novela, En lengua materna, publicada en esta colección, fue premiada con el PEN Hemingway Award, el Oregon Book Award y el American Book Award, entre otros galardones, mientras que las revistas The New Yorker y Granta lo destacaron como uno de los más prometedores escritores del nuevo siglo.«Una novela vigorosa y poética que llega hasta la raíz de aquello en lo que indaga... Excelente» (Marcos Giralt Torrente, El País); «Escritura especialmente afilada y perturbadora» (Manuel Ollé, ABC). Con su segunda novela, Una vida de gestos, se consagró como una de las voces más originales y ambiciosas de la literatura norteamericana contemporánea: «La angustia y el esplendor de una prosa que fluye sin desmayo, apretada de significaciones y consoladora como el sueño de opio que trata de espantar el acoso de una pesadilla» (Juan Manuel de Prada, ABC); «Muchos críticos le han comparado a Kazuo Ishiguro. Un nuevo valor seguro en la literatura contemporánea» (Isabel Núñez, La Vanguardia). Desde las alturas es su tercera novela: «La primera novela suya que me engullo, y debo decir que, a partir de ahora, me cuento entre sus seguidores más fieles. Altísima temperatura literaria. La prosa, magnífica. A Lee le han comparado con Updike. Por derecho propio ya forma parte de la pléyade de los más grandes» (Jordi Llavina); «La cristalina prosa de un joven maestro» (Rodrigo Fresán, Página 12).

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    Reviews for The Surrendered

    3.5/5

    196 ratings35 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is beautifully written book about the horrors of the Korean War.
    • 4/5
      The first half of this novel was totally engrossing; I looked forward to every chapter. Then, it seemed to take a turn and I almost had to force myself to finish. First set in Korea after the war, a young girl, June Han loses her entire family. We next see her in an orphanage run by some Christian missionaries, Rev. Tanner and his wife Sylvia. Other chapters tell of the back story of Sylvia, the daughter of fearless missionaries whose lives took them all over the world into some of the worse conditions of which Sylvia saw as a child growing up. As a young girl, she is in Korea and seems to have a young love of a man found to be a Communist spy. The killing and torture is brutal. Sylvia is a broken woman but one that commands devotion from her husband and many of the children at the orphanage.Hector is an American soldier charged with the "clean up " of killed soldiers -- brutal work. He stays in Korea for lack of anything better to do and is the all-around handy man at the orphanage. He has a relationship with Sylvia and does June.Hector eventually marries June in order to bring her to the US, but the marriage is mostly a sham and they are divorced. Now we see June as a successful businesswoman selling antiques. Her son, Nicholas, is somewhere in Europe. June finds Hector (who has just now seemingly found a woman to settle with), but this woman is killed and Hector and June go off to Italy in search of Nicholas. June is dying of stomach cancer. The events in Italy are often just beyond believable and there is much "angst" on the part of everyone.I've heard so much of this author and obviously, this is a well-written novel, but was just too long, too involved, and too much.
    • 3/5
      I have read so much about this book, I expected to love it but I didn't. I was captivated at the beginning, when the story was about June during the Korean War. Unfortunately, the story bounces around between childhood and present-day times of several characters. I felt that the book was too long for what it said and that many of the characters were people I never came to care about. I also thought the last fourth of the book was contrived to get to the ending and was so improbable.
      The book has gotten lots of good reviews, however, so you may enjoy it more than I did.
    • 2/5
      This being a book of historical fiction I thought I would get a little more history than I did. There is very little in this book about either the Korean War 1950-1953 or the Japanese takeover of Manchuria in the 1930s. The main focus is the relationship between the missionary Ames Tanner, his wife (Sylvie Tanner), an American GI (Hector Brennan)and an orphan (June Han)set at a Korean orphanage in the aftermath of the Korean War. There is another thread, set in 1980s when June, now elderly and dying, searches for her son in Italy. Although this may all sound confusing, it is not hard to follow, but that doesn't make it good!I felt no empathy for any of the characters, I learned little history and the book totally lacks humor. It is all about some weird relationships. In a good author's hands, weird relationships may become tantalizing, but not here. Perhaps I am being overly critical. There is a message; history sets a stamp upon the lives of those who live through it. I do admit it is hard to follow a book as excellent as To the End of the Land by David Grossman, which both taught history and magnificently rendered a triangle love relationship.The author, Chang-rae Lee, never brought the characters even within arms-lengths. Always they remained at a distance, and for this reason I have only given The Surrendered two stars. Not terrible, but just OK.
    • 2/5
      HOLY DEBBIE FRAKKIN' DOWNER! As someone in my book club said, there is a bell curve on luck and some people are way on the far end of the bad side. Is there great literature in this fact? Sure, somewhere, but I'm not so sure Lee has found it. For every instance of effortless writing there is an instance where the novelist's hand is far too apparent. This book needed an editor real bad. I like that he doesn't judge his characters, and I don't mind the multiplying of horrors, but it just grinds on and on and some of the plot feels like it constructed by a drunk uncle with 2x4s. Though very different in tone, in its flaws it reminded me of 1Q84.

      It also brought back flavors of Under the Volcano, but it couldn't hold a candle to that book.

      I was rooting for Sylvie Tanner.
    • 4/5
      Lee, who transcends the implicit category of Korean-American fiction, has written a novel of desolation, betrayal and bleak redemption.
    • 1/5
      If the story had been engaging, maybe I’d forgive the spectacular failure in craft on exhibit here. But alas, the story was boring as hell, so throughout the novel, I fixated on how horrible Lee’s writing was here. My vehement (and some of you will probably say overdramatic) reaction was no doubt due to the fact that I resented having wasted so much time finishing it for a group read that I was doing. The characterizations were so pedestrian, so uninspired, that I was shocked that this author wrote Native Speaker, which while not perfect, at least wasn’t an embarrassment like The Surrendered. In particular, Lee’s descriptions of Hector, one of the three main characters, were horrifying in the artlessness of it all. To make things worse, Lee kept repeating this same dreck several times. Honestly, the Hector parts constituted some of the lamest writing I’ve ever encountered—and this comes from someone who reads her share of romance novels, a genre not known for elegant writing. When I work up enough energy, I’ll go digging for examples of these horrible passages to post in this review.
    • 3/5
      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 of the character's parents, who never even figured in the narrative, all bridged inbetween by endless Sargasso Seas of third-person interior monologues consumed with misery. Every major and minor figure in the book is a complete emotional cripple, dragging him/herself and everyone around them (and the reader) into dank depths of depression. Those few characters who manage to begin to pull themselves free of their ruined and awful existences, just as they reach the cusp of a possible better life, suddenly meet a cruel and horrific death. Every single one!I don't mind depressing literature, especially when it's delivered in such soaring and original language as this novel. But the interminable wallowing in self-inflicted horror inevitably squandered my sympathy and lost my interest.
    • 3/5
      The Surrendered brings together multiple themes of life, war, love, and the human spirit. An American soldier Hector Brennan encounters the Korean orphan June at a Korean orphanage in the aftermath of the Korean War and they share a history that continues to haunt them both over thirty years later. June, now a successful businesswoman dying of cancer, is determined to put back together the pieces of her life before her death and she seeks out Hector to help her. However, this decision leads to tragedy for them both and uncovers secrets about both the past and present. An ambitious story for a novel, the characters and plot just failed to grab me as I hoped they would and I never really got into this book. A good story overall, if a bit sad.
    • 4/5
      The story of a triumvirate of deeply flawed characters, all influenced by their Korean war exposure. Slightly underwhelming denouement, which was too clearly signposted. Suitable for 15+, due to graphic battle scenes & several rapes as acts of war. Will read more by this author.
    • 3/5
      The Surrendered doesn't, in my opinion, live up to the rest of Lee's work. It has clearly drawn characters, who are human and very flawed - limited and hurt by their own mental constraints. In many cases, these limits and failures are responses to terribly traumatic pasts. Unlike some of the readers who disliked the book because the characters were flawed and limited, I don't think that is a failure here - many people are, indeed, damaged, hurtful, hurting and self-abnegating - these are believable people, to whom incredible things have happened. The past histories of these characters are also well done in the work - told in Lee's careful phrasing, with the right amount of detail - although these things don't happen often, they do indeed happen, and I couldn't find fault in the histories or how they connected to the development of the characters in the "present" of the novel. However, I was disappointed with some of what I saw as shortcuts inside of that "present". Things that happen in the "now" often seemed contrived, deus ex machina like, to move the plot forward - something I know from experience Lee doesn't need to rely on to make a great plot happen. And I felt that some of the present interiority of the characters - their self-reflections and thoughts and feelings - were sadly thin, or repetitive. I was disappointed that I didn't have the experience with this book that I'd had with The Gesture Life and others - that said, however, I think it is still a very solid work that most readers will enjoy (particularly if they read Lee's other books after The Surrendered, instead of before) as long as they do not need happy and kind people and positive outcomes.
    • 2/5
      Lee has not only a great talent, but well-honed skill with words... but I'm afraid I had a lot of trouble convincing myself to pick the book up again and read more. Maybe it's just me, but I had a lot of trouble suspending my disbelief and going along with some of the things Lee wrote: one character in particular is very difficult to believe in, and the unrelenting bleakness was, well... it was a downer. Sad books can be great, but I struggled with why I was supposed to enjoy reading about these particular darknesses. It may just be personal.
    • 2/5
      An incoherent book that jumps from character to character in flashbacks weaving an unconvincing tale that throws all sorts of tragedies together-war, fire, strange relationships and that do not ring true, cancer, drugs, alcohol, sex etc. The characters are all seriously depraved. I do not recommend the book.
    • 1/5
      A highly overwritten book that can pierce your heart with its surprising interludes of violence and cruelty, as well as loyalty and love. There are words you won't know, and the author seems to be writing to impress, employing an eliptical style, which, by the end becomes quite annoying. The narrative is minimal; most of the action is in flashbacks and there are only a few characters. The Korean War and an orphanage near Seoul play major roles. But other than the random violence and sadistic/masochistic impulses that can suddenly overwhelm you, the point of the novel is murky. There is one pleasant interlude, but it ends quickly with two people dead. The main characters are two superhumans, both short on empathy, one a handsome brawler, the other a woman who almost seems capable of overcoming any challenge. Sporadically riveting, the book is ultimately quite disappointing.
    • 4/5
      My laptop battery is going to die any second! I thought this was smart and sensitive and not sensationalistic and made you care about the characters, although there was this one incident in the middle that was just a fridge too far belief wise and almost, but not quite, sunk the whole thing. Recommended!
    • 3/5
      I loved the plot and the characters in this book, although it was slightly long for me. Good ending, I had to struggle to like June....
    • 4/5
      I love this authors beautiful and evocative writing. He creates characters you come to care for and a novel that is hauntingly beautiful.
    • 5/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      This is a beautifully composed book. The characters are deeply written and the historical context is well-researched and seamlessly incorporated. Parts of it are very uncomfortable to read since they deal with the horrors and consequences of war, but these scenes are not gratuitous and further the plot or set the scene. Reading this made me interested in reading other works by Chang Rae Lee which is always the truest sign of a good book.
    • 5/5
      Hector Brennan, June Han and Sylvie Tanner are ruined human beings all trying to live life one footstep at a time. The three come together just after the Korean war in an orphanage in Korea. Can love take hold withing hearts destroyed by suffering and loss?
    • 4/5
      "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 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.
    • 4/5
      This wonderful writer had me living in various places and times - NYC/NJ/Italy in the 80s, Korea during and after the Korean War, Manchuria during WWII. I loved the writing, even though I could have done without the graphic violence expected during war years. I loved the character of Hector; I wish I knew a bit more of June's early years after Korea which formed her later character.
    • 4/5
      The surrendered pulled me in with the flowing prose of Chang Rae Lee. With the story running in the present with the past being explained as it goes, my feelings towards June as the main character came into view changed throughout the story. A viewpoint on the Korean war that I have not read from before, and enjoyed thoroughly.
    • 4/5
      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. 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.
    • 4/5
      This was a very well written book. I think this will become a classic. It is not an easy book to read. It is about tradgedy and hardship and how 3 lives are entertwined. This book is for people who enjoy a serious read.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 2/5
      A DNF for me, but I made it page 280 so I will share my thoughts.. The beginning had me hooked. An eleven year old June is struggling to save her young brother and sister in war torn Korea.. There is train hopping, food scavenging, and torn off limbs.. WOW. Then June is living in New York and looking for her art thief son. Fascinating. Then is switched to Hector. Hector is all about drinking, fighing, and fornicating. He is a former G.I. that worked at an orphanage that June resided at. The book goes from 1980s New York to 1950s Korea with Hector lusting after the minister's wife at the orphanage I mentioned. The wife is Sylvie and she has a drug problem and a few war secrets of her own. I never grew to like Hector or Sylvie and I just wanted it to go back to June but when it did finally go back to June, I didn't like her either anymore. I didn't like how she turned out. You got three people that have all been to hell and back in some way and not one of them becomes a better person from their experiences? Didn't work for me but a lot of people are loving it, so give it a go.
    • 5/5
      An exceptional book to say the least! It is the story of an orphan of the Korean war, an american soldier who finds her, and the husband and wife missionaries who run the orphange where the soldier takes her. It combines past and present and the story of these four people during their lifetimes. The characters are very real and you feel close to them throughout the book. It is a beautiful book about life and love and death. You don't want to miss this one!
    • 4/5
      This was a dark but engrossing story about the horrors of war and how the wounds and scars of war affect a person forever. June was a child when the Korean War began and lost everything. Hector is an American who fought in the war. Chang-rae Lee weaves the story from present to past to present in a clear and understandable way. The characterizations are excellent, and each character in the book stays true to him/herself. The story draws you in to the last page. I would have liked a different outcome to the story of June's son, but life is sad, as this story points out. And yet all parts of the story is completed, there are no loose ends, and it brings the reader to a satisfying end.
    • 2/5
      The Surrendered was a book of odds for me. The opening chapter pulls you in with the story of a girl trying to survive the horrors of war while taking care of her two younger siblings only to lose them. The book then goes forth from switching points of view between the characters June, Hector, and Sylvie. It goes back and forth from the past to the present between them, giving people an idea what it was like from different character aspects. This book is meant for a mature audience and those who are intrigued with books about war, hardship, and overcoming life's depressing matters.