Breaking the Tongue Book

I finished this one a few days ago, but had to give myself a few days to sift through everything, try to figure out how I could possibly explain this book in a way that would do it justice.

The Lims - father Humphrey, mother Cynthia, Grandma Soik, teenaged Claude, and little sister Lucy - are an English-speaking Chinese family living in British-ruled Singapore during WWII. None of them, save Grandma Soik, speaks or understands Chinese. They all enjoy the upper-class life Humphrey's bank job buys and seem to be a perfect family, but only till you get to know them. Humphrey's unquestioning adoration of all things British drives Cynthia into a clandestine cycle of self-destructive behavior. Grandma Soik reads all the time from *The Art of War* and tries (with no great success - one session ended with the children covered in fire ants)
to teach the children life strategy lessons. Lucy - well, it's hard to say what Lucy's struggle was, as she was a mostly peripheral character til the very end of the book.

Our main focus, though, is Claude. Claude, he never knew where or how he fit in. He was Chinese, raised in British-ruled Thailand, by an Angophile father. He found the "natives" distasteful, but at the same time, the British considered {i}him{/i} an English-speaking, well-mannered "native", and treated him accordingly. Claude deals by withdrawing and detaching, acting out passiv-aggressively when he's forced to entertain Jack, a British family aquaintance. Shortly after, Japan invades, and Britan loses her nerve. The Lims' cushy ride is over. This crisis throws Claude in closer than he ever wanted to be with Jack, but it also crosses his path with Ling-Li, who is a spy. As Singapore falls, the triangle of Claude, Ling-Li, and Jack is formed.

*Breaking the Tongue* burrows through layer upon layer of uncomfortable racial ickyness till it gets to the core of Claude's identity. He's dual-natured, his upbringing conflicting with his heritage to the very end of the book. It's a gorgeous, visceral, heartbreaking story. The only downfall was the format - it was so segmented, it was like a toddler's attention span. Seriously. Page-breaks all over the place, characters dropping in and out, plot threads running everywhere. The best word I can think of to describe it is kalidescopic. Or maybe fragmented. Anyway. Four stars.