Jesse Q. Sutanto: On Murderous Blind Dates and Aiming Low as a Writer — Katrin Figge

Jesse 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, half seriously.

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 US, 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 toOxford 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 one of them, and so Jesse and her husband moved to Jakarta almost eight years ago.

“It was quite an adjustment, especially for my husband, because Indonesia is so different from England, in every possible way,” she explains. One of the biggest changes, she says, was to have her family close by again.

“We went from a very quiet life in England, where my husband’s family lived five hours away from us, to having everyone basically living on the same street here in Indonesia,” she says.

One day, Jesse recalls, her husband suggested that she write a story based on her family.

“I thought they were just boring and normal, but he said, actually, there’s nothing normal about them,” she says, laughing. Following her husband’s advice, Jesse sat down with the intention write a novel inspired by her family – but it wasn’t working.

“I was trying to be realistic, and the family drama was too close to home,” Jesse explains. “I didn’t enjoy it, so I put the idea to rest and focused on other things. It wasn’t until later that I thought, what if lean the other way and go for the absurd, the unbelievable, throw a dead body in there and explore how my family would react – and then, it just flowed so easily. I was shocked at how natural the humor came.”

The most challenging part about “Dial A For Aunties” for Jesse was how to solve the issue of the crime. After all, her protagonist does commit murder.

“I had a vague idea of the ending, since it was a rom-com and I wanted to stay loyal to the genre and play by the rules,” Jesse says. “But it was difficult to give these people a happy ending because I put them into a tight corner and wasn’t sure if I could get them out of trouble again.”

The positive response to her book has been somewhat overwhelming – but it doesn’t stop there. The Aunties are soon coming to a TV screen near you, as Netflix has already acquired the rights for an adaptation. Jesse herself serves as executive producer – something she still can’t quite believe yet.

“It was so unreal,” she says, sounding incredulous. “My agent had just sent out ‘Dial A For Aunties’ to book publishers, but soon she started getting calls from film agents. She was confused, wondering how they found out about it, but they didn’t want to reveal their sources. It was a little mysterious. But since this hasn’t happened for any of my other books, I feel that the Aunties are on their own little magical journey.”

Kourtney Kang, who has already worked on the highly popular sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”, is the scriptwriter for the production, while Nahnatchka Khan (Fresh Off the Boat, Always Be My Maybe) is going to direct.

“Once the script is finished, they are going to start with the casting,” Jesse says. “I think that the aunties should be the stars of the film and I would love for Ali Wong to play Fourth Aunt. Don’t you think she would be such a perfect fit?”

Jesse isn’t one to slow down or rest on her laurels. Next year, she will publish four more books: a follow up to her YA novel “The Obsession”, a YA rom-com set in Indonesia, a children’s fantasy book, and a highly anticipated sequel to “Dial A For Aunties” – yes, Jesse confirms, we will meet all our favorite characters again, and the story will be set in England this time, with the Aunties going full British, but that is all she wants to reveal for now.

When asked how she manages to juggle being a productive writer, a daughter, a wife and the mother of two young kids aged 2 and 5, Jesse chuckles and says that she doesn’t have a social life and no hobbies to speak of. At the same time, she admits, she has a lot of support, especially with her daughters.

“I used to have a lot of writing rituals, but ever since I had kids, all of these rituals have gone out the window,” Jesse explains. “I have to steal away whatever writing time I can find, in between taking care of the children. But luckily, my parents are our neighbors. So I can always send them off to grandma.”

What has also helped her to become a fast writer was the realization that she doesn’t necessarily have to create the next masterpiece that wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.

“My advice to aspiring writers would be to aim low,” Jesse says. “When I started writing, I had this goal in my mind to write an amazing, brilliant book, but there was so much pressure that I put on myself that I ended up procrastinating instead of writing. Only when I told myself, that it’s okay for the first draft to be complete trash, because I can always edit and fix it later, I started writing very fast.”

In fact, one of Jesse’s favorite writers has always been Terry Pratchett, an English author of fantasy novels, especially comical works.

“I feel like his books have been a very big influence on me, particularly the way he wrote comedy,” Jesse says. “I was also always very inspired because he used to come out with two books a year, like clockwork. Every six months, I could count on a new Terry Pratchett book, so I always wanted to aim for that myself.”

To find out more about Jesse Sutanto, visit www.jesseqsutanto.com.

The article was first published in the Jakarta Post on June 11, 2021.