This novel follows two timelines: Englishwoman Claire Pendleton comes to the British colony of Hong Kong in 1953 with her new husband, and finds work giving piano lessons to the daughter of a wealthy Chinese couple and falls into a love affair, and in 1942, when Englishman Will Truesdale and Trudy Liang, a Eurasian socialite, the daughter of a Portuguese mother and Chinese father, find the Japanese invasion of the island upending their relationship and everything around them.
Claire has never before traveled far from life with her mother in the pedestrian London suburb of Croydon, and Hong Kong is an exotic and confusing adventure, and she soon gets caught up in its expatriate life and society, with all of its class- and race-conscious unwritten rules. She is bound by her past life and its narrow views, yet she wants to take chances and break free.
Will and Trudy have a far different sort of existence, but even though Trudy comes from great wealth, and is extraordinarily beautiful, she can't escape the stigma of her Eurasian background, which influences every aspect of her life. Will, as an Englishman, moves between her world and the club-like English expatriate society, where as a white man of the ruling government, he has far more latitude.
The paralleling plots unfold and eventually intersect, but not before the horrors of World War II and its aftermath settle themselves on the very complex, brittle and rigid world of this society.
While much of the description of the setting at both times can be beautiful, the author does not subdue the horrific conditions of the war and its effects, both on the physical environment and on human behavior, which reaches new lows, much as it did in Europe. It is very clear that people are the same everywhere, good and bad, no matter what they look like or where they come from.
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