Ponti by Sharlene Teo

Ponti, Ponti, Ponti…what a vexing read. This is one of those books that was ceaselessly frustrating and, dare I say, ultimately pointless. What was this book even about? There is no story, not really. We don’t even get satisfying character studies to make up for the plotlessness of Ponti. The characters are thinly-rendered and unfunny caricatures that for 99.99% of the novel remain unchanged in their behaviours & attitudes. Given the comparison to authors such as Elena Ferrante and Emma Cline, I went into this hoping for a story about fraught and complex female friendships and found myself bitterly disappointed as the one friendship we get is not really a friendship, not at all.
I will try to give an impression of what this novel is about but you will have to bear with me as, as I stated above, this novel doesn’t really have a plot. The narrative is set in Singapore and the chapters alternate between Szu, Circe, and Amisa. Szu’s chapters take place in 2003 when she’s sixteen, Circe’s in 2020, and Amisa’s take us from the late 60s to the 80s. Amisa once starred in an indie horror trilogy called Ponti. After that, her acting career never took off and she goes on to live a rather miserable life. Her daughter, Szu, both reveres and is discomfited by her. Because of her ‘horror’ past, Szu becomes obsessed with the genre and the Ponti trilogy in particular. Szu is alienated from other girls and spends most of her school days creeping her classmates out. She eventually falls in with Circe, who is from a wealthy and fairly stable family. The two allegedly become friends but in adulthood, they no longer are in touch. I guess the reason for their falling out is what is meant to propel the storyline but my god did it drag. I felt no interest in seeing how their falling out would unfold as I never bought into their friendship. The two are horrible people. Szu’s personality revolves around her supposedly ‘macabre’ love for horror and gory stuff. That’s it. If you were to strip off that, she would have no discernible traits. Circe is an acerbic bitch who spends most of the time being a selfish little brat. As an adult, she manages to be even more grating. Amisa’s chapters, which are told in the 3rd person, do not give us much insight into her or her past. What we learn about her life there, well, we’d already learnt about it in Szu’s chapters. The ‘humor’ involves a lot of girls being catty about other girls, more often than not Szu thinking mean things about Circe & Circe saying bitchy things to Szu. The way they describe other women/girls is fairly vile.
This kind of toxic dynamic does work when say done by authors such as Ottessa…but here, it just fell flat. The characters were so one-note and often sounded very much like the same person. The dark humor promised by the summary doesn’t really come through. The narrative tries to be edgy and gritty by having passages dedicated to Circe talking about her tapeworm or our various characters taking shits. Wow, how s u b v e r s i v e. I’m shook. Most of the chapters came across as repetitive as they give us time and again the same glimpses into these women’s lives. Their inner-monologues added no depth to them, if anything, they made all the more unbelievable and indistinguishable from each other. Everything is abject: one’s body, other people and their bodies, Singapore, womanhood. Every character has greasy hair and oily skin, which is fair enough, but these are often regarded with repulsion by our mcs. Again, if the author had managed to pull off’s Ottessa’s biting humor, maybe this could have worked but as things stand it just felt forced.
I kept on reading hoping that at some point the story would take off but it never does. Nothing major happens nor do we gain more insight into the characters and their various dynamics. This was a waste of my time. The only thing this book succeed in was in establishing the setting of Singapore. That’s about it.

The characters are 1 dimensional & vile, the non-existent story goes nowhere, and the prose tries & fails to be edgy/gritty.
If you are interested in this novel and not put off by its overall low rating here on gr I recommend you check out more positive reviews.

my rating: ★★☆☆☆

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