There's Room for Everyone in Epic American Western, 'Now I Surrender'

"In the self-conscious hallucinatory tradition of historical novelists like E.L. Doctorow and Don DeLillo, Enrigue keeps intrusively reminding us that this overpacked tale of the past is something he's constructing, as much as resurrecting. And, like his predecessors, Enrigue subscribes to a paranoid reading of history."

"Now I Surrender has been described as a revisionist or 'alternative Western,' which it is, but given its scope, I think it might be more apt to call it an 'expandable Western.' There's room for everyone in this epic of conquest and eradication: Native Americans, Mexicans, gringos, formerly enslaved people, immigrants and one lone writer gamely trying to tell their stories."

"Enrigue's novel, which takes its title from Geronimo's eloquent words, loses some vitality when it focuses on the story of his surrender and afterlife as a prisoner of war and a curiosity: Geronimo appeared, for instance, at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis and rode in Teddy Roosevelt's inaugural parade the year after."

Álvaro Enrigue's novel 'Now I Surrender' employs a self-conscious, hallucinatory narrative style reminiscent of E.L. Doctorow and Don DeLillo, deliberately reminding readers that history is constructed rather than simply recovered. The novel weaves together a captivity narrative about a Mexican woman abducted by Apache, Geronimo's surrender and subsequent life as a prisoner and public spectacle, and broader stories of the borderlands between Mexico and the United States. While the novel demonstrates unsentimental admiration for Apache culture, its sections on Geronimo's fall and captivity feel more like writerly obligation than passionate engagement. Rather than a revisionist Western, the expansive scope suggests an 'expandable Western' that accommodates Native Americans, Mexicans, Americans, formerly enslaved people, immigrants, and the author's attempt to preserve these narratives.

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