Sharlene TeoPonti

This book is great. It is set in Singapore but across three different eras and from three diffeent perspectives. Lots of interesting observations about the changing eras of the city and changing personalities of the characters. The storytelling is brilliant and the writing is lovely. The three main characters are beautifully put together and sympathetic. And the supporting cast is nicely observed too.

Reading a masterpiece from an author whose culture is the same as me is by far the best inspiration. It has sparked a nostalgia so close to a similar past we share. Even the pontianak seems like a story from a neighboring kampung we just went there to have our nasi lemak, without the crispy rendang chicken the English chef preferred.The writing is descriptive and flowery. The movement and angst of the characters are vividly described. As a reader, I want to know the depth of the three main characters' emotional connections more.For the love of the tropical heat, the torrential rain and proverbial 'lah', read this book.

I added Ponti to my wish list after reading rave reviews on Instagram and it became my final book of 2023.Amisa, Szu, Circe. Mother, daughter, school friend.Amisa lives in a small village with a large family until she moves to Singapore to start a new life aged 17. Szu is someone people don’t take to but no matter because she hates her life, her mother and the world in general until she becomes best friends with Circe.The story unfolds through three narrators over three timelines: Amisa’s past and her starring role as Pontianak, a murderous monster of Malay legend, brought to life in a cult horror film trilogy in the seventies; Szu and the life-changing events of 2003 when the girls are aged 16; 2020 where a lonely and dissatisfied Circe finds herself tasked with promoting a remake of Ponti that brings buried feelings of infatuation, guilt and loss from her time with mother and daughter to the surface. Myths, mysticism and memories.Ponti is beautifully written and gave me a real sense of Singapore - the heat and the haze, smog and sweat, sights and smells, regeneration and redevelopment, wet markets and apartment blocks.The recurring Pontianak, psychic power, beauty and ugliness, specialness and otherness motifs kept the pages turning but Ponti left me with way more questions than answers. I would’ve liked more depth to the characters, especially Aunt Yunxi, and I felt everything just fell a little bit flat on this “hot, horrible earth”.

Beautifully written, evocative and relatable. Teo manages to put into words, the feelings you've had, but didn't put into words yourself.A story of family & friendship through the years, but full of honest angst and sharp, funny humour. Definitely worth a read.

A very promising debut from a young writer who clearly has a flair for descriptions of character and how they interact as well as the Singapore environment.Moving backwards and forwards in time between Szu, Circe and Amisa the story unfolds in entertaining fashion and I am certainly not going to ponti-ficate!!Well worth a read and it will be fascinating to see what the author will conjure up next!4.5 stars.

The book moves between three different timelines: Szu’s account of her teenage friendship with Circe in 2003, Circe’s reflections in the present day, and Amisa’s story beginning in 1968. I have to say I found Amisa’s story the most absorbing, describing as it does how, as a result of a series of disappointments, she becomes the cold, distant mother we encounter through Szu’s eyes. The sadness of Amisa’s story is that the shattering of her dreams is something she never really gets over.Szu’s and Circe’s teenage friendship emerges from a shared feeling of being outsiders, ‘citizens of nowhere’ in Circe’s words. It’s this sense that they don’t belong that initially draws them together. But, despite being intense, it’s not an untroubled relationship because of their different backgrounds and life experiences. Looking back, Circe marvels at how brief what she terms the ‘Age of Szu’ actually was. She describes the gradual fracturing of their relationship, how being friends with Szu became ‘like carrying around a heavy, sloshing bucket of water’.I could completely empathise with what Szu goes through but also understand what a vast amount of patience on the part of a friend would be required to see her through the worst times. Circe, who in the modern day story seems to rid herself of partners in the same merciless way she does her tapeworm, I found less easy to like.All three women are, in different ways and with varying degrees of success, trying to find their way through life. It’s a well-crafted novel and an impressive debut. There was a lot I liked about it without completely falling in love with it.

I happened to be Sharlene's taxi driver. When she told about her book Ponti I bought it straight away.To be honest, I was blown away by Ponti. As a first debut novel it felt incredibly well written. Fantastic work.

Read the book to the end in the hope of being excited by it eventually, didn't happen though - left wanting more..