Red Herrings--Mystery in The Surrendered--Deborah Rocheleau

     Mysteries aren’t just for detective novels. We see this firsthand in Chang Rae Lee’s The Surrendered, in which war-survivor June Han uses red herrings and deception—elements of the mystery genre—to obscure the truth. In chapter nine in particular, we find a dubious conversation between June and her son Nicholas in which she tells him about Sylvie, a woman she knew during the war.

She told him [Sylvie’s name] and though it could mean nothing to him the name seemed to spark his imagination as might a character in a story. “What happened to her?”

     “There was an accident.”

     “What kind of accident?”

     “A fire.’ (250)

     From an earlier scene on page 48, we know that June often lied to Nicholas about her past, and so this dialogue could be laced with “loose improvisations” (48), carefully constructed to sate Nicholas’ curiosity about the war without revealing the truth. Several factors throw suspicion on June’s words; her observation that Sylvie feels like “a character in a story” suggesting that, like a fictional character, Sylvie is subject to the imagination of the author. June’s reluctance to provide specific details until pressed further suggests deception, in light of the passage on 48 in which June admits that “she found that concrete facts would put [Nicholas] off” the scent of the truth. Countless times throughout the novel, Chang uses June’s unreliable narration to build suspense in the reader, slowly revealing what is lie and what is a fact concerning what really happened during the war.

     Readers must finish the book to discover which of June’s words are true. Along the way, however, her ability to deceive becomes more and more pronounced, even as readers must rely on her as a narrator. This unreliable narration technique plays throughout the novel, as the reader is propelled, much like the private investigator Clines—to uncover the truth one unrelated fact at a time.