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On murderous blind dates and aiming low as a writer: Jesse Q. Sutanto’s literary voice
The writer’s recently published novel Dial A for Aunties is a refreshing mix of rom-com and murder mystery – and it is coming to Netflix soon.
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Funny murder: 'Dial A For Aunties' is Chinese-Indonesian author Jesse Q. Sutanto's debut novel. (Jesse Q. Sutanto/Courtesy of Michael Hart)
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esse Q. Sutanto doesn’t think of herself as funny or even remotely remarkable. In fact, she calls herself “mediocre and forgettable” and shares a story about how she recently met a former classmate from high school who couldn’t even remember that they had been in the same class.
“And there I was thinking, how could you not remember? I thought we were friends! I invited you to my birthday party,” she says half-jokingly.
But even though her classmate may have trouble remembering her, Jesse’s wicked sense of humor seeps out of every page of her latest book, Dial A for Aunties, a somewhat crazy tale that follows the story of protagonist Meddy Chan, a Chinese-Indonesian living in the United States who accidentally murders her blind date.
Instead of calling the police, Meddy enlists the help of her mother and three aunties. Together, they come up with a plan to get rid of the body, but naturally, it all goes wrong. The corpse ends up in a cooler on a resort island where a lavish wedding is about to take place the next day – the wedding that Meddy and her aunties are, of course, organizing.
If the plot sounds a little bit crazy, that’s because it actually is. Since its release, Dial A for Aunties has received a lot of love from critics, readers and fellow writers alike. Author Emily Henry (Beach Read, People We Meet on Vacation) called it “utterly clever, deeply funny and altogether charming,” while Beth O’Leary (The Switch) said she “found it impossible to put down and lost count of the number of times I laughed out loud”.
For Jesse, the praise is flattering, if unexpected. In her previous books, she says, she dealt with much more serious issues. But in the end, it was her upbringing and the gentle encouragement of her husband that led her to give comedy a try. She was born in Indonesia and moved to Singapore at the age of 7. After graduating from school, Jesse relocated to Oxford to obtain her master’s degree in creative writing.
“I was supposed to stay for two years, but then I met my now-husband, who is English, and I ended up staying for a much longer period than I had bargained for,” she recalls. But after many years in England, Jesse adds, she really missed the tropical climate. There are many things about Oxford she loves, but the rainy, cloudy weather is not for them, and so Jesse and her husband moved to Jakarta almost eight years ago.
