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Rosie Milne

Ponti
by Sharlene Teo 
Picador
4.5 stars

Sharlene Teo won the inaugural Deborah Rogers Writers Award (established in honour of the late London literary agent) in 2016 for an extract from her work-in-progress, Ponti, set in her native Singapore. The UK-based writer’s novel has finally been published.
Ponti (short for pontianak, the man-hunting female ghoul of Malay legend) is part coming-of-age, part dawn-of-death novel. In 2003, as Singapore chokes under the haze produced by forest fires in Indonesia, Szu and the distractingly named Circe are two 16-year-olds who struggle to fit in with their peers, but who find solace in their new, and developing, friendship. Szu’s impossibly beautiful mother, Amisa, is dying.
In her youth in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Amisa starred as the Pontianak in three hammy films: Ponti 1, Ponti 2 and Ponti 3. These vanity projects, funded by the director’s wife, flopped, so at 24, Amisa “had three films to her name, but her name didn’t matter”. 
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Teo can’t have intended it, and she does point out that this is not the cliché of the fame-hungry actress and the sex-hungry powerful man, but the passages concerning Amisa’s relationship with director Iskandar Wiryanto are sure to make readers think of Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement.
Ponti is told from the perspectives of each of the three women, Szu, Circe, and Amisa.
She was like sarin gas, leaked poison
Teo’s character Circe describes another, Szu
Szu and Circe are both first-person narrators. Since Amisa dies during the novel, Teo uses the third person to tell her story, which runs from 1968 to 1987. All but one of the chapters from Szu are set in 2003. Circe’s chapters are set in 2020.
Szu is compelling and believable; she is filled with authentic teenage confusion, distress and a sense of specialness. The first chapter is written from her perspective, and through her Teo grabs the reader from the novel’s opening lines: “Today marks my sixteenth year on this hot, horrible earth. I am stuck in school, standing with my palms pressed against a green wall. I am pressing so hard that my fingers ache. I am tethered to the wall by my own shame.”
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Szu is also given the final chapter, set in 2020, and almost at the very end of the book, Teo echoes her opening sentence: “So it’s a hot, horrible earth we are stuck on and it’s only getting worse.” But here it is not an observation born of unmitigated teenage gloom, but one tinged with hope.
In 2020, Circe is a thirty-three-year-old divorcee doing a trendy contemporary job managing the social media accounts of B-list celebs and arts projects. The Ponti films are going to be remade, and Circe is asked to drum up interest in the remakes. 

She has had no contact with Szu since soon after Amisa’s death, back in 2003. But working on the Ponti account forces her to confront her memories of Szu and Amisa, and also to examine her own self-centred behaviour back when she was 16.
Even leaving aside all the references to the pontianak, the supernatural seeps through Ponti. Szu grows up surrounded by threatening magic, or faux magic, since Amisa’s post-acting career is as a rackety medium. She works in cahoots with Aunt Yunxi, a woman described as “half woman, half violin. She screeches, she is narrow and stiff.” 
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Ponti, filled with vivid and spot-on descriptions, metaphors, and observations, is a novel to enjoy line by line.  Among my favourite passages is one in which Circe, as an adult, remembers her youthful, and regrettable, behaviour towards Szu, a newly bereaved girl in the early stages of an eating disorder, how she was unable to block her out: “She was like sarin gas, leaked poison.” A few lines later Circe compares Szu’s limbs to chopsticks, and comments that such was the fear she engendered, even the school bullies left her alone. 

Teo is particularly brilliant at evoking a sense of place. In 2003 Szu, Amisa and Aunt Yunxi live in a grim, dilapidated bungalow originally paid for when Szu’s father, now absent, won the lottery. The bungalow is a brooding presence that seems to oppress those living in it. Szu comments. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Japanese used to torture people here during the war.”

The other setting Teo conjures brilliantly is Singapore itself. She captures the city’s restlessness and modernity, alongside its adherence to tradition, and questionable celebration of its past.  In 2020, Circe goes out to a new bar modelled on an old-time coffee shop. It “looked and felt like a dingy old kopitiam, down to the unstable plastic chairs and stray cats, except it served S$25 chendol espresso martinis and the staff wore a uniform of printed black wife-beaters and too tight jeans”.
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This nostalgia amid skyscrapers and a career in social media is typical of Singapore. 
Above all, Teo conjures the sweaty heat of Singapore, with Szu and Circe both commenting regularly on its effects on skin: opening pores; making faces oily and damp.
Teo’s portrait of Singapore is so good it would not be a surprise if Ponti were a contender for the next Ondaatje Prize, awarded to a work that best evokes “spirit of a place”. People talk about “the great American novel”, or, in Britain, “the state of the nation novel”. Ponti is a great Singaporean novel, and a marvellous investigation of the state of the tiny island nation.


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Ponti is a great Singaporean novel – compelling, evocative coming-of-age tale and portrait of a nation

Sharlene Teo’s novel, told through the voices of three women and its title short for pontianak – the man-hunting female ghoul of Malay legend – is a book to enjoy line by line, so vivid and spot-on are its descriptions and observations

Tourists take pictures under tropical palm trees on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2012 in Singapore. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

Ponti cover

Sharlene Teo

TO GO WITH AFP STORY "Singapore-development-housing-village,FEATURE" by Simin Wang. This photo taken on January 13, 2011 shows landlady Sng Mui Hong, 57, posing for a photograph outside her Kampong Lorong Buangkok village home in Singapore. Quietly tucked away in a corner surrounded by high-rise apartments and rows of bungalows is a rustic village where the old Singapore still survives. Dogs and cats run freely and chickens cluck noisily as children play around colourful, zinc-roofed houses made of wood and cement, undisturbed by the din of cars zipping by on an expressway just a few metres away. Welcome to Kampong Lorong Buangkok, the last surviving village on the Singapore mainland. AFP PHOTO/ Simin Wang

Haze enshrouds Singapore at dusk. Sharlene Teo’s novel Ponti evokes the notorious haze of 2003 in the city state. Photo: EPA

Cheryl Tan on her novel Sarong Party Girls, Singlish and young women in Asia

Author and journalist Cheryl Tan at the Kee Club in Central, Hong Kong. Photo: Chen Xiaomei

C8FB1W Singapore, Asia, Merlion, water vomiting, spitting, lion, mermaid, blocks of flats, high-rise buildings, Skyline, Downtown, pass. Photo / Alamy Stock Photo [2016 FEATURES ONLINE]

This handout image shows The cover of Sarong Party Girls. Photo / HANDOUT [14NOVEMBER2016 FEATURES ONLINE]

C7BN80 Boats and restaurants at night, Clarke Quay, Singapore river, Asia. Photo / Alamy Stock Photo [2016 FEATURES ONLINE]

Author and journalist Cheryl Lu-lien Tan photographed at Kee Club in Central, Hong Kong, 12NOV16 SCMP / CHEN Xiaomei [2016 FEATURES]

The story of China’s opening up told through one family’s history in Scott Tong’s A Village With My Name – book review

A Village With My Name is a remarkable achievement: the writer has overcome his own family’s reluctance to speak about a past punctuated by heart-rending episodes to tell the story of China’s re-emergence through their lives

Handout image shows Scott Tong, author of A Family History of ChinaÕs Opening to the World. [21JANUARY2018 BOOKS POST MAGAZINE]

Post magazine Jan 21, 2018 reviews

Beijing at the turn of the 20th century, when Scott Tong’s history of modern China, told through his family’s, begins. Picture: l'Illustration

Book review: Unrest – Singapore Literature Prize winner gets great English translation that’s well worth the wait

Since publishing Unrest in 2004, author Yeng Pway Ngon has written Trivialities About Me and Myself (2006), Art Studio (2011) and The Costume (2015).

Cover of Unrest

Tofu for sale at street stall

(FILES) This file photo taken in June 1966 shows Red Guards, high school and university students, waving copies of Chairman Mao Zedong's "Little Red Book" as they parade in Beijing's streets at the beginning of the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". Launched by Mao in 1966 to topple his political enemies after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution saw a decade of violence and destruction nationwide as party-led class conflict devolved into social chaos. / AFP PHOTO / JEAN VINCENT

Growing up in 1930s Shanghai: Hongkonger’s memoir of soirees, school days, a shooting and some Black Swans

Isabel Chao’s 2008 visit to her childhood home sparked an idea for a memoir on life in pre-Communist Shanghai. Chao, who co-wrote the book with her daughter, explains why she decided not to focus on the tragic

--ONE TIME USE ONLY-- This handout image show Isabel Chao, in what she calls her 'Wizard of Oz' i.e. Dorothy lookalike hairdo. It's undated in Shanghai, China. [10DECEMBER2017 FEATURES POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT / COURTESY OF ISABEL CHAO

--ONE TIME USE ONLY-- This handout image show Isabel Chao on her first boyfriend's motorbike during her last summer in Shanghai, China. [10DECEMBER2017 FEATURES POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT / COURTESY OF ISABEL CHAO

--ONE TIME USE ONLY-- This handout image show Isabel Chao at the Peak Cafe in Hong Kong, 1953. [10DECEMBER2017 FEATURES POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT / COURTESY OF ISABEL CHAO

Nanjing Road, in a 1930s poster of Shanghai. Picture: courtesy of Vince Ungvary

(left to right): Interview with Mother Isabel Sun Chao and Claire Chao, of "Remembering Shanghai," a memoir about love and betrayal in 1930s Shanghai at Repulse Bay. 17NOV17 SCMP / Edmond So

--ONE TIME USE ONLY-- This handout image show Isabel Chao at the Airline Club in Shanghai on December 9 1949, a few months before she left the city for Hong Kong (one of the musicians there wrote a song for her, this is mentioned in the copy). [10DECEMBER2017 FEATURES POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT / COURTESY OF ISABEL CHAO

--ONE TIME USE ONLY-- This handout image show Isabel Chao's family home in Lane 668 in Shanghai, which later became Zhenning Road. (The illustration is by Hui Ming-fai and the creation of this image in Honolulu is mentioned in the copy) [10DECEMBER2017 FEATURES POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT / COURTESY OF ISABEL CHAO

--ONE TIME USE ONLY-- This handout image show Isabel Chao's mother, her Muma, whose full name was Fei Baoshu, in Shanghai, China, pre WWII, date unknown. [10DECEMBER2017 FEATURES POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT / COURTESY OF ISABEL CHAO

--ONE TIME USE ONLY-- This handout image show Raymond, Isabel Chao and their children - from left to right, Lloyd, Claire and Leslie, taken in 1965 in Hong Kong. [10DECEMBER2017 FEATURES POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT / COURTESY OF ISABEL CHAO

--ONE TIME USE ONLY-- This handout image shows Virginia, Isabel Chao's elder sister, in her early twenties. [10DECEMBER2017 FEATURES POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT / COURTESY OF ISABEL CHAO

Handout image shows book cover Remembering Shanghai, by Isabel Sun Chao and Claire Chao. [10DECEMBER2017 FEATURES]

--ONE TIME USE ONLY-- This handout image show Isabel Chao's brother, the writer Sun Shufen, in the late 1970's . [10DECEMBER2017 FEATURES POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT / COURTESY OF ISABEL CHAO

--ONE TIME USE ONLY-- This handout image show Isabel Chao, newly married to Raymond, on their honeymoon in Tokyo in 1956. [10DECEMBER2017 FEATURES POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT / COURTESY OF ISABEL CHAO

Claire Chao with her mother, Isabel. Picture: Edmond So

Culture

Books

Sharlene Teo’s novel, told through the voices of three women and its title short for pontianak – the man-hunting female ghoul of Malay legend – is a book to enjoy line by line, so vivid and spot-on are its descriptions and observations


Singapore

Lunar: Stories

An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


Review

.css-sioo19{color:#c79a00;}Review | Ponti is a great Singaporean novel – compelling, evocative coming-of-age tale and portrait of a nation

Review | Ponti is a great Singaporean novel – compelling, evocative coming-of-age tale and portrait of a nation