Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Teo's relatable yet unsettling novel smartly captures earnest teenage myopathy through a tumultuous high school relationship." - Publishers Weekly

"...the novel never quite amounts to more than the sum of its parts, the quieter intricacies of the relationships overwhelmed by the volume of the premise. All the pieces are there, but the end result is frustratingly hollow." - Kirkus

"Sensuous ... The Singapore in Sharlene Teo's Ponti is vivid and immediate, its people complex, beautifully sketched and captivating." - The Times Literary Supplement (UK)

"Everything about Ponti suggests it's the rare, real deal and Teo's a writer we'll be reading for many years to come." - Financial Times (UK)

"At once a subtle critique of the pressures of living in a modern Asian metropolis; a record of the swiftness and ruthlessness with which Southeast Asia has changed over the last three decades; a portrait of the old juxtaposed with the new (and an accompanying dialogue between nostalgia and cynicism); an exploration of the relationship between women against the backdrop of social change; and, occasionally, a love story - all wrapped up in the guise of a teenage coming-of-age novel. ... Teo is brilliant." - The Guardian (UK)

"With brilliant descriptive power and human warmth, Sharlene Wen-Ning Teo summons the darker currents of modernity – environmental degradation, the suffocating allure of the sparkling modern city and its cataracts of commodities and corrupted language. Against this, her characters glow with life and humour and minutely observed desperation. I read this extract longing for more." - Ian McEwan, author of The Children Act and Atonement

"This haunting debut hopscotches between decades and cultures, eschewing the usual moves of the coming-of-age story for something truer to the desperate, surreal stakes of adolescence. Sharlene Teo is a daring and genuinely original novelist." - Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

"A radiant, achingly beautiful novel about relationships between women." - Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From

"Ponti is darkly hilarious. It offers up all the anxiety, snark, sadness, and wonder of being a teenager. Teo guides us through the grunge of growing up. She asks what it means to be a monster and what it means to be beautiful. Is it possible to be both?" - Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You

"Witty, moving and richly evocative...a major talent - Sharlene Teo has produced not just a singular debut, but a milestone in South East Asian literature." - Tash Aw, author of Five Star Billionaire

The information about Ponti shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's online-magazine that keeps our members abreast of notable and high-profile books publishing in the coming weeks. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author of this book and feel that the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.

Sharlene Teo

Sharlene Teo is a Singaporean writer based in the UK. She is the winner of the inaugural Deborah Rogers Writers' Award for Ponti, her first novel. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Esquire UK, Magma Poetry, and Eunoia Review. She is the recipient of the 2013 David T.K. Wong Creative Writing Fellowship and the 2014 Sozopol Fiction Fellowship.

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