PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksIt’s big, ambitious, and full of an almost reckless risk-taking ...is one of the most harrowing, hair-raising, mouth-drying experiences I’ve ever had while reading a work of fiction. Everything that could go wrong does go wrong, and from there gets worse. Amazingly, this downward slope continues beyond the first chapter into the purest abjection ...motion of the narrative requires The Surrendered to move from the realism of its war chapter to melodrama and a whole host of other popular narratives involving femme fatales, hard-boiled detectives, mob bosses, and petty crooks ...writing is no less polished, no less beautiful to behold, than in Lee’s earlier novels, but it also serves to move the story along, to draw us into a moment, to give us a sense of immersion that more often than not Lee’s other writings have given only partway.
