Debut novel

Ponti

Singapore 2020 and 1978 cult movie Ponti is being remade. When social media consultant Circe, 33, is asked to work on the project, she cannot explain her pain. School friend

Szu was the daughter of Amisa Tan, the original Pontiaak, a monster who stays beautiful by feeding on male blood. The girls were chalk and cheese: Szu fatherless, long dolorous face, lifeless ponytail. Circe, has a maid and a mum with a Porsche. Szu’s house, where Amisa and Auntie Yunxi are mediums, “contained a beautiful discontent,” recalls Circe. Szu has zero selfesteem; she knows she talks too much, that she is nothing like her mother. “This woman who broke her daughter’s heart every day. She had a brand of bruised yet appealing insouciance that I wanted to grow into one day,” confesses Circe. Amisa dies at 45. “After her mother died, being friends was like carrying a sloshing bucket of water,” says haunted Circe. Where

Circe once allowed Szu to curl up against her back like a snail, she became a little Grinch. Mesmerising.