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Synopsis
Ponti, Sharlene Teo’s first novel, is a coming-of-age and psychological fiction released in 2018. Ponti received enormous fame as soon as it was released. Set in Singapore, friendless and fatherless Szu starts the novel by describing her miserable life as a sixteen-year-old teenager. Things seem to get better for Szu when she meets Circe, Szu’s first friend in school who does not judge her, but her mother Amisa and her death soon complicates their friendship. Written from the three female characters’ perspective, Ponti explores how the feeling of love shapes the three distinctly different characters’ lives and the concept of beauty influences each stories’ ending.

Characters
Szu

A sixteen-year-old teenager who fails to fit in at school and is a nobody at her own home. She lives in the shadow of her stunning mother Amisa. Friendless and fatherless, she yearns for the sense of belonging and the feeling of being loved. Then she become friends with a new student in her class named Circe who lets Szu at least momentarily escape loneliness she feels at school and at home.

Amisa

Szu’s single mother with a short-lived career as an actress. Her flawless appearance makes her an arrogant woman, as she realizes that she never got the attention she deserves for looking so beautiful. This only leads to dissatisfaction and results in unhappy relationship with her family, in which her beauty contrasts with her cruelty and casual disregard towards her teenage daughter.

Circe

a new student in Szu’s class. She is the only character in the story who approaches Circe without any hesitation. Circe’s character is strong and confident and she has a perfect smile that nobody can forget. Her straightforward personality and honesty puts her friendship with Szu in danger.

Themes
Beauty

Asia has always been known for its strict standard on beauty. The western figures have always been looked up upon since long time ago, and plastic surgeries even exist to satisfy people’s obsession over beauty today. Amisa is the one with the beautiful looks. But her beauty exists only physically. She is cold and mean, even to her own daughter. Her beauty brings many men to approach her and gives her the opportunity to star in a movie when she is young, it also ruins Amisa as she gets older when everything she receives for being beautiful on the outside disappears along with her youth. ‘It is the beautiful bird that gets caged’, according to an old Chinese proverb. Amisa is that poor bird whose life is determined by others because of her flawless looks. At her deathbed, none of the things she earns through beauty, such as men and fame, is left.

With Amisa’s influence, Szu realizes the importance of beauty ever since she is a child. She grows up underneath her mother’s shadow. Her lack of confidence in her physical looks take her self-respect away. She presents herself as nobody throughout the story and lets others define her. Szu learns to be a shadow, because the physical beauty is what is important, not the inner beauty, in the world she lives in. The only one that seems to be beautiful both inside and outside is Circe. With her perfect smile and amicable personality, Circe befriends Szu who never feels welcomed by anyone and belonged anywhere. But unfortunately, Circe fails to shine as a person when she is with Szu, due to the lack of beauty in Szu’s personality and too much negativity resulting from Amisa’s beauty.

Love

Love is a prevalent theme in many novels. Usually, love is involved in stories in a way that the characters are searching for love or passion, or in a way that love is the cause of all incidents that happen in a story. However, this is not the case in Ponti. Rather than being the main dish in the story, love acts as more of a spice added to each character’s story and personality. All three main characters in this novel are women who are not dependent on men, whether it is by their own will or not.

Amisa does not seem to fervently love her own husband, Wei Loong. He is not rich, but is not poor. He is not fun, but not completely boring. Overall, Wei Loong is not a bad option at the time of Amisa’s marriage, just good enough of a husband. In fact, the only man she expresses love towards is not her husband but the director, Iskandar Wiryanto, of the movie she stars in titled ‘Ponti’. Thinking that she can be loved in return by Iskandar, Amisa tries to entice him with her beauty and body, but Iskandar coldly rejects her. On the surface, Amisa seems to be loved by everyone. But deep inside, she never finds someone she can truly love.

Szu yearns to be loved by others. From the beginning, she seems to have given up on receiving attention from her mom Amisa. With both her friends and family ignoring her, Szu is thirsty not only for love but also for the sense of belonging to a group. She wishes for changes to happen to her, thinking that she is the problem, because nobody seems to welcome her, even at her own home. Growing up with constant comparison with her mom and judgments from her classmates, Szu never gets the chance to be loved by others and, most sadly, love herself.

While Amisa and Szu try to find love from someone else, Circe is capable of loving herself. Although it is never explicitly described in the novel, Circe’s self-love is evident from her confident and honest personality. She is not afraid to hide her emotions and thoughts. Her self-confidence lets her become friends with Szu, whom all other classmates stay away from. Circe does not search for men or someone else to love her, for she is already content with love she gives to herself.

Context
Singapore

Singapore is an island country in Southeast Asia. It is known for its fast transition from a third world country to a first world country in a single generation. After the rapid development, Singapore has been recognized as most technology-ready nation, most innovative country, city with best investment potential, and so on. Recently, Crazy Rich Asians, a 2013 by Kevin Kwan that focuses the grandness and prosperity of Singapore, was made into a film that grossed over $238 million worldwide. It easily became the highest-grossing romantic comedy in a decade. This book and film describe the bright and luxurious life in Singapore, which gave their audience fantasy about the idea of Singapore.

Ponti shows areas of Singapore that are not mentioned in novels like Crazy Rich Asians. Szu compares Singapore to “the bull’s-eye where the sun in aiming a shot at the earth with the intention of killing it”. The characters in Ponti are not fascinated with their home country. Some might say Ponti is too sad and pessimistic, but others might say it is quite accurate and realistic. Amisa, a one hit wonder actress, and Szu, a nobody to her classmates and her mother, capture the dull and not-so-special life in Singapore. Written from a Singaporean writer’s perspective, Ponti provides a new outlook on Singapore.