In Times of Trouble, a Search for Identity : THE SCENT OF THE GODS, <i> By Fiona Cheong,</i> W. W. Norton, $19.95; 224 pages

There are many rooms in great-grandfather’s house, “big silent rooms with tall red doors.” In the long corridors are brown-edged photos of dead relatives. The soft shuffle of servants keeps the house in simple order, and the eternal candles are kept lit for the souls of the dead.

The family is Chinese, living in the former British colony of Singapore during the time of native Malaysian uprisings in the 1960s. “The Scent of the Gods” is a novel of a family’s search for identity during politically turbulent times.

In the many rooms of the quiet house there are Buddhists, Catholics and communists. One grandson longs to become a soldier to defend Singapore’s newly acquired independence. His aunt is enamored of things American, including faded Levi’s and Gary Cooper films.

The ruler of the family, the omnipresent grandmother, is concerned with repressing all things not Chinese. Su Yen, the young narrator of the story, is on a difficult search for her womanhood.

An orphan since shortly after her birth, she and her two male cousins are reared by the dictatorial grandmother: “Chinese children are not expected to say much, girls even less so than boys.” Su Yen’s “duty is to watch and listen.”

This sets a formidable task for Su Yen’s first-person narration. How does an author tell a story of repression without repressing the information? How does a narrator who does not question provide answers? The obstacles are inherent in the setup; Cheong’s richly embroidered prose often has nowhere to go. The reader is left with an uneven and unfinished story.

As the novel opens, the three cousins play hide-and-seek under great-grandfather’s house, where the foundation pillars and networks of water pipes are “long-used and full of balance.” Grandmother warns them not to play after dark when evil spirits lure away children by calling out their names in disguised voices. It is not the spirit world that lures away the innocents, but rather the world of political turmoil and the struggle for personal independence.

The first to go is Uncle Tien, who disappears shortly after government men come to the house.

Aunt Daisy’s is the next life torn by violence. After leaving the house to see a Gary Cooper film in the city, she is raped and returned to the house in a daze.

One cousin dies not long afterward. Against his grandmother’s wishes, the boy has joined a military cadet group at his high school, and one night he is mistaken for a “real” soldier and killed.

It is not a good omen that Su Yen gets her first period soon after her cousin Li Shin’s death. The sign of blood could be a warning from the gods.

Here are the ingredients for a moving coming-of-age novel, but here are also the problems of voice for a narrator who ages from 5 to 11 in a story with such a strong political backdrop. History is bandied about in family conversations like the driest of lesson books, complete with dates and geographical routes. The three children play war games with enough factual information to write a university term paper.

Su Yen is a coalition character, both a pedant and an unknowing, untelling child. The alliance is uneasy.

I have trouble believing that a 5-year-old child looking out a window “thought about the Portuguese who had conquered Malacca in 1511, driving the last Sultan, Mahmud Shah, into exile.” Closing her eyes, this child imagines the Dutch arriving “one hundred and thirty years later to conquer the Portuguese.”

It is particularly annoying that a child with such an incredible wellspring of historical data is unwilling or unable to provide more immediate family history. What did her parents do, working for the government in Central Intelligence before they died? What actually happens to her uncle--does he die? Disappear to America? Or perhaps he never has left and lives in the boarded-up room of grandfather, where Su Yen sees mysterious lights.

Su Yen’s voice, striving for personal freedom, is at times a poignant one. But it is often lost in historical data and repressed beneath the burdens of secrets. “In the face of so many terrible things possible, meaningful answers were not spoken,” Su Yen imparts early in the novel. This part of the story holds true: Meaningful answers are not spoken.

Next: Jonathan Kirsch reviews “Dungeon, Fire and Sword” by John J. Robinson (M. Evans & Co.)