The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee. ✔✔✓

The novel begins in 1955 Korea with June Han, an 11-year-old girl who has, in the last few days, seen her father and brother taken away by Chinese forces, witnessed first-hand the deaths of her mother and older sister, and is now fleeing the area atop a boxcar with her younger siblings. Pretty harrowing stuff, and these events shape the life of June Han, who when we meet her in 1986, has just closed her antique shop in New York, is dying of stomach cancer, and is planning a trip to Italy to re-unite with her son, whom she has not seen for years. Her unwilling comrade on this final trip is Hector, the father of this missing son, and the one who saved June's life years earlier in Korea after she finished the boxcar journey. Hector was an American soldier working in Korea at the time, who takes June to an orphanage, where their lives become intertwined with Sylvie, the lovely wife of Rev. Tanner, the orphanage leader. Hector and Sylvie have also had some harrowing experiences in the war, and the novel is about how their lives have been shaped by these earlier experiences.

The Surrendered is very well-written, but oh, such undiminishing sorrow and tragedy throughout. I was reminded of Mistry's A Fine Balance, one of my all-time favorites novels, but I didn't feel this author was quite the calibre of Mistry. He moves back and forth in time, and this helps to relieve the sorrow somewhat, because you do need time to step back, absorb what has just happened, and understand why these three characters are as flawed as they are by war and circumstance. But I found I didn't really care for the characters themselves too much. Why was June so disliked by the other children at the orphanage? How did Hector become the father of Nicholas- this is never explained? And Sylvie seems like a romance novel figure - transparent nightgowns, etc.

I'm not exactly sure why the novel is titled "The Surrendered". I don't know who was surrendered, how or why. A reader review I read stated the novel became more illuminating after a second read, but I'm not sure I could take it!