The good, the bad and the aunties (by Jesse Sutanto)

(Amazon UK link)

I had not heard of Jesse Suntano. She’s a Chinese-Indonesian writer who has apparently had several books published. In our local book group we like to read a variety of books from different cultures, and we also like something fairly light-weight for December. So ‘The good, the bad and the aunties’ was chosen for this month’s read. 

I thought the title was clever, and was aware before I started that this is the third in a series about the same family. Each one has a title that’s a spoof on a famous film title. The first in the series - ‘Dial A for Aunties’ - won a comedy award and has been made into a film. I hoped it didn’t matter that I hadn’t read the first two in the series.

‘The good, the bad and the aunties’ is narrated by a young, newly-married Chinese-Indonesian woman called Meddy. She’s been on a long honeymoon with her husband Nathan, and they’ve now met up with her mother and aunts, who live in the United States. They have travelled to Jakarta (in Indonesia) to meet the extended family, and to celebrate the Chinese New Year. 

The cultural part of this novel is, I assume, authentic and based on the author’s own experience. There’s a huge extended family, and Meddy doesn’t even know all the names of her cousins’ children. Vast amounts of food are prepared for every meal, and Meddy is regularly asked when she and Nathan are going to produce a grandbaby for her mother. 

But the characterisation is, on the whole, very two-dimensional. Nathan is almost too good to be true: he isn’t at all fazed by interfering relatives, and quickly learns names. He seems to get along with everyone, and doesn’t find anything awkward or embarrassing. He’s also good-looking and muscular, and Meddy’s family all think he’s wonderful.

As for Meddy’s mother, known as Ma, and her aunts (known, bizarrely, by names such as ‘Second Aunt’ and ‘Fourth Aunt’) I couldn’t really tell them apart. The family they have come to meet are even more shadowy, only one or two of them given names, none of which I can recall despite just finishing the book a few hours ago. 

The plot of the book consists of an increasingly unlikely series of incidents. A tattooed man, apparently a gang leader who is also a businessman, arrives unexpectedly with a whole train of cars behind him. He has come to see Second Aunt whom, he says, he has been in love with for years. She becomes rather embarrassingly flirtatious and admits to having had a crush on him, too. 

His name is Abi and he’s invited in to the celebrations, where he joins in by offering baskets of red envelopes. I assume this is a Chinese custom; it’s explained that all the married people hand out red envelopes containing cash to the children and other unmarried folk. 

However, it turns out that he accidentally put an important document in one of these envelopes. There's no hint of explanation as to why he put a vital property deed in a red envelope in a basket with others. He needs it back urgently or he’ll be in trouble with a high-powered businesswoman who also appears to be a gang leader. So Meddy and her close family pile into a car (I have no idea why they all had to go) to visit this woman, known as Julia Child, and to promise that they will retrieve the document. She keeps Nathan as a hostage, which makes Meddy panic… 

And this starts a sequence of increasingly unlikely scenes, including violence, disguises, drugging guards, entering a house under false pretences, and more. I didn’t feel involved in any of it, just more and more incredulous. I realised towards the end that structure of the book felt like a children’s graphic novel without the pictures. It was like the library books my ten-year-old grandson reads, full of people getting in and out of potentially dangerous situations, as if they’re cartoon characters, with little thought of consequences and no depth of characterisation. 

The pace is good, but there’s a lot of internal monologue from Maddy which ‘tells rather than showing’ what’s going on, and thus seems rather flat. And there are so many cliches I’m surprised the editor didn’t reduce them. Some of the conversation seems to be poking fun at Maddy’s older relatives, and some of it isn’t relevant or necessary at all. And there are many references to someone whom Maddy killed (I assume in one of the earlier books) although that does not seem to be relevant at all to this story.

Possibly I’m the wrong kind of audience for this book. Maybe young adults who grew up on graphic novels would appreciate it more than I did. It’s supposed to be comic, but I didn’t find anything amusing - it just seemed rather silly to me. It wasn’t a difficult read, and I did keep going. I finished it in a couple of days. I’m glad I found it second-hand rather than paying full price for it, and have no plans to look for the two earlier books in the series.

I wouldn’t recommend this book at all. But don’t necessarily take my word for it. This series has a lot of fans, so if you liked the first two ‘aunties’ books, then you might like this one too.

Review copyright 2024 Sue's Book Reviews