A Voice for Independent Authors
― E.A. Bucchianeri
REVIEWING TODAY: UNDER THE PONG PONG TREE BY HAL LEVEY
Under the Pong Pong Tree by Hal Levey begins with the brutal 1942 Japanese invasion of Singapore, telling the tale of a young, beautiful Chinese girl, Li Lian Goh, who is immediately raped by soldiers and dragged to work servicing the occupational forces as a girl of the local Comfort House, where she is beaten and impregnated by Captain Hoda, a beastly man later killed by an American hero at the battle of Guadalcanal. She manages to escape and live hidden with indigenous Malays, giving birth to a daughter – Maimunah – who takes the status of anak beli, a bought child, the term applied to a non-Malay child adopted into a Malay family. Such a child is never meant to meet its biological mother. Li Lian then becomes a full-fledged member of the Malayan Communist Party and takes post-war ownership of a rubber estate that also produces heroin and palm oil for the profits rubber no longer commands. Her daughter receives a privileged education, while Li Lian succumbs to the drugs she so assiduously produces.
Incredibly, and sometimes a bit coincidentally, these plot elements by which Hal Levey weaves his tale Under the Pong Pong Tree are inextricably related and brought together in Part II of this entertaining story. Where one might expect to find a lengthy, meandering, epic sort of tale, this book actually moves with the fast pace more common to a modern thriller or a movie. In fact, the manner in which the novel is truncated to accommodate the necessary speed, and the way in which the various plot elements eventually converge, suggest a style much like that of a screenplay. What saves this book from becoming too rapidly episodic, however, is the author’s flare for writing interesting scenes, and the reader finds himself caught up in the white-water turbulence of its flow, unwilling to deny that he is simply taken by the story. A lot worse ways to spend your reading time than with writing as brisk as this.
Joel R. Dennstedt – Reviewer Author-Journalist-World Traveler
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In concert with the sentiment above, I share my professional reviews of books by Indie Authors. I am an official top reviewer for Readers’ Favorite, a highly-regarded and award-winning online review site. Adhering to their standards of professionalism, ethics, and formatting, I offer my life-affirming voice to a greatly deserving field: Indie Authors.