MixedBookslutThe Surrendered follows three characters whose already-complicated lives intersect at a Korean war orphanage in the 1950s. As the novel shifts between settings and points of view, we find that events that occur at the orphanage (chiefly, a fatal fire) make it impossible for the people involved to truly move on –– even if they do not acknowledge it themselves ...travels between the characters' individual stories, in periods of time before and after they meet: in Korea in the midst of civil war; two decades earlier, in China during Japanese occupation; the languid, working-class town of Ilion, New York during Hector's childhood ...Lee's talents show themselves in other deceptively small moments and details... Even when the language is beautiful, the plot that it forms is shaky ...becomes a study of how these human beings navigate the places where their flawed understanding of each other overlaps.
