Reviews

Praise for Lions In Winter (December 2007)

“The exile returns to illuminate an intimate part of Singapore, and does so quite beautifully.”
Neel Chowdhury, TIME

“A wonderful debut. Wena Poon crosses the cultural - and spiritual - divide with wit, pathos and resolute bravura.”
Rosalind Porter, Senior Editor, GRANTA

“Asia desperately needs more narratives like hers to cancel out all the foolish, precious exoticism, pagodas and bound feet and concubines everywhere.”
Preeta Samarasan, author of Evening Is the Whole Day

“Poon’s writing is lean…there are several instances when she manages to achieve an effect in a few sentences that other writers can’t manage in entire novels.”
Alexandra Wong, book critic for The Sunday Star

"Poon’s stories are rich with ambivalence, which lends a thematic complexity to her writing....an impressive first collection with much to offer its readers. "
Eddie Tay, book critic, Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore

“Poon's great gift...is to keep that freshness of vision and to bring out the extraordinariness of the ordinary lives she describes."
Sharon Bakar, editor, Silverfish New Writing

“Wena Poon’s stories are both delicate and explosive. In Lions in Winter she writes about people at the margins of our lives, people who are so because we fail to invite them closer. Here they insist on the invitation and each new encounter is a revelation.”
Brian Leung, author of Lost Men and World Famous Love Acts

“A commendable début, refreshingly unpretentious and heartfelt."
Tan Twan Eng, Man Booker Prize-longlisted author of The Gift of Rain

Praise for The Proper Care of Foxes (October 2009)

“Brainy, talented…brazen…a sly child [who] creates miraculous buildings out of thin air.”
Richard Peabody, prize judge, of “The Architects”, Poon’s winning story in the 2010 Willesden Herald International Short Story Competition.

“Here is a writer who is fluent in the feel and thought of an impressively broad range of worldviews... Hers is unmistakeably the voice of the new: A Mrs Dalloway on speed.”
Judith Huang, book reviewer, Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore

“Poon’s short, sharp, bang-up-to-date prose, full of irony and wit, is unmistakably twenty-first century, the language of modern western civilization...There is a celebratory note to this collection, a sense of something new coming, developing.”
Carol Fenlon, Short Fiction In Theory and Practice Vol. 1, UK

“Dramatic, haunting...she’s written stories and crafted characters that are definitely Southeast Asian without stories being irrelevant for those outside our region.”
Rizal Solomon, New Straits Times

“Endearing characters...Neoluce, A Love Story [is] a bite-sized cyber punk story satisfyingly reminiscent of Cory Doctorow’s work.”
Christopher Lim, book reviewer, Business Times

“Wena Poon is the sassiest of writers. Her characters don't just “live”, they bounce off the page and pour themselves a drink. Poon has a real, enviable gift.”
Vanessa Gebbie, winner of the Daily Telegraph First Novel award, the Fish Short Story Prize and author of Words from a Glass Bubble

“Wena Poon creates characters who are globe-trotting and tech-savvy -- "connected" in the most obvious of ways. She then peels away the glossy surface to expose the less expected, more complicated ties between individuals, wryly yet affectionately charting the personal maps by which they navigate an increasingly globalized world.”
Stephanie Yap, books reporter, The Straits Times

“My personal favourite is Vanilla Five, which holds up a mirror to the 21st-century New York multicultural metropolis. Siegfried, the spoilt and suicidal but certainly lovable she-male, gets the Most Memorable Character Award.”
Tan May Lee, editor of Quill magazine

“Wena Poon’s world is small because her characters – often brash, flirtatious, culture-fluent, young bourgeois who own the Future Present – are large. Their lives bestride whole oceans, and the continents are squares of a hopscotch for the games they play. Even prose clings to the contours of their whimsical desires, and The Proper Care of Foxes is a roll of snapshots showing their most compelling intimate moments. Poon is an inspired photographer of the stories behind those cryptic smiles that people frame up.”
Gwee Li Sui, literature professor and editor

“These stories are formed from the sparks that fly between opposites - between nostalgia and the future, between the local and the global, between the bruised and the beautiful. In these electrical discharges, Wena Poon finds music.”
Adam Marek, Bridport Prize-winning author of Instruction Manual for Swallowing

“Wickedly funny, full of little turns and surprises, warmth and humanity.”
Suchen Christine Lim, winner of the Singapore Literature Prize and author of The Lies That Build A Marriage

“Goes round the world like a well-travelled passport, stamped with humour, compassion and wit. A perfect travelling companion.”
Simon Robson, Edge Hill Prize-winning author of The Separate Heart

Praise for The Biophilia Omnibus (October 2009)

“Breathtaking, jaw-dropping, gravity-defying science fiction epic full of incredible characters, gobstopping entertainment and a very, very odd planet.”
Notes on Culture blog, London

“An absorbing video game with a love story in it.”
Amazon review, US

“Recalls the great movies of Terry Gilliam [with] talking animals, aliens, and a well thought-out (in some places almost heartbreaking) relationship between a man and a woman.”
The New Straits Times, Malaysia

“Flawless...easy-to-read, just as captivating at page 1 as it was by page 741.”
Amazon review, US

“Excellent battle scenes, entertaining dialogue, and (thankfully) no more technical detail that is necessary for the reader to understand what is happening. Poon’s style is light and hip, like her main character.”
Amazon review, US

What critics are saying about Alex y Robert (2010)

“One of the most exciting fiction writers to come out of America in the last few years…Alex y Robert gets down and dirty (and high and sexy) in a world combining high theatricality with hard graft, sequins with blood.”
Bidisha, BBC arts presenter and author of Venetian Masters, UK

“Whether you’re cheering for the bull or the matador, Wena Poon gives you pause. Not since Hemingway have we seen such an insightful treatment of the divisive subject of bullfighting.”
Stephen McCarty, Editor-in-Chief, Asia Literary Review, Hong Kong

“Forget Hemingway - this is something completely different. Stripped of all the machismo, blood lust and bad writing, Alex y Robert is a fresh and startling look at a world quickly fading into myth and history.”
The Catholic Herald, UK and Ireland

“A more talented, nay gifted, original, authentic and compelling contemporary storyteller than Wena would be hard to name.”
Paul Blezard, broadcaster, presenter at the Hay Festival, UK

"Perfectly structured and viscerally imagined, Alex y Robert drags bullfighting kicking and screaming into the 21st century, wonderfully evoking the smells and sounds of the ring in cold, pithy prose."
Stav Sherez, author of The Black Monastery and The Devil's Playground, UK

“The Asian American literary kuntslerroman...the perfect book for Asian American literary theory because it's about racial metaphor.”
Stephen Sohn, Assistant Professor, Stanford University Department of English, USA

“This is a literary novel which is also a page-turner, an exciting story which is intelligently organised and very well written. It also asks questions on identity, on how opinions are shaped and cemented, on tradition and modernity, on danger, beauty, cruelty and violence, and shirks nothing. My advice: get some olives, pour a large glass of fine Rioja, and imagine that it’s sunny outside. Pick up this book and start reading.”
Rob MacKenzie, poet and author of The Opposite of Cabbages, Scotland

“Weaves one of the oldest skills in the world - bullfighting, with one of the newest
skills - social networking...there were moments where the writing literally took my breath away.”
Pam Reader, The Walk Cafe Book Club, Nottingham, UK

“Alex y Robert...no es sólo una prueba de que la ficción es más un juego de relaciones que de realidad. También de que las cosas son muchas veces resultado de las conexiones más inesperadas.” Laura Rodriguez, El Colectivo Londres magazine, UK

“The story of Alex’s relentless pursuit to take the alternativa and perform, if only once, at Las Ventas is told quite capably by Poon. It’s hard to fathom that, just one year prior to publication, she had never been to Spain...and spoke barely a word of castellano.”
Randi Weaver, book critic, La Divisa magazine, Club Taurino Londres, UK

“An interesting and rich subject and one that deserves to be explored. Poon handled it well otherwise I wouldn't be able to read it. Animal cruelty is something I can't tolerate. Besides, my dog's name is Toro.”
Julia Van Middlesworth, winner of the Seán Ó Faoláin Prize and the Fish Short Story Prize, USA

“Utterly gripping, I read it in one go, cover to cover. Couldn't put it down. Beautiful edition too, stunning cover. A must-read book for 2010.”
Jane Holland, fiction editor, Embrace Books, UK

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