A Thousand Tiny Truths

Synopsis

A THOUSAND TINY TRUTHS is a novel of an unconventional family, set in London and Saigon in the early 1960s. Marcel is ethnically ambiguous. Born of an adulterous affair and abandoned in infancy by his mother, he is a brown-skinned child growing up in racially charged London under the care of a white surrogate father named Oliver. Trying to cope with Oliver's bizarre ideas of parenting and longing for his mother, Marcel struggles to find a way to belong. When Oliver gets a job as a foreign correspondent in Vietnam, Marcel is left in the care of his father's ill-equipped friend, a window dresser named Pippa. The world is being swept by a wave of liberation - coups, revolutions, and the end of colonialism - and while Oliver rushes towards the action, Marcel is set adrift in swinging London. Drawing becomes his refuge. Just when it seems they will never be reunited, Marcel is sent to join Oliver in Saigon. What could be the risk? By early summer of 1963, however, the fragile balance is broken. As the war escalates, Oliver is finally overwhelmed by emotions he can't outrun. And when Marcel finally uncovers the truth about his mother, his entire world is overturned. In this profound novel of betrayal and resurrection, Kyo Maclear blends cultures and classes with wry humour, and casts an astute eye on the reluctant yielding of old ways to a new internationalism.