Opening chapters are hard to write, and that’s one reason we’re looking closely at every book’s first chapter in this Novel Study series. Novelists have to draw us into the story and get us hooked on the plot while also getting us up to speed on the characters and setting. In other words, readers want things to start happening, but we also need to understand why they are happening and what’s at stake in order for us to care. It’s a tricky balancing act!

I picked Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Dial A for Aunties in part because her ambitious double-barrelled plot requires her to cover a lot of ground in her early chapters. By the end of chapter one alone, she’s accomplished the following:

• Introduced us to our protagonist, Meddy, and established her core backstory conflict: she feels loyal to her mother and aunts (due, in part, to a family curse that means all the men in the family leave), but that loyalty has thwarted both her career ambitions and her romantic relationships.

• Established the support cast of Meddy’s mother and three aunties and their complex sibling dynamics.

• Kicked off the A plot: Meddy and the aunties are preparing for the biggest wedding they’ve ever handled in their family business; the tensions (and stakes) are high.

• Hinted at the B plot: Meddy’s mother has set her up on a blind date that is going to lead to the accidental murder that will become only one of many complications for the A plot.

Sutanto manages all of this in the space of twenty pages (that’s about 5,000 words!). Let’s see how she does it.

To start, she covers one key piece of the backstory—that family curse—in a prologue. We’ve discussed the pros and cons of prologues in more depth in a previous post, but this is certainly a case where a prologue helps Sutanto accomplish her goals. Set eight years before the story begins, the prologue introduces the story of the curse, which goes back generations, and shows how it influences Meddy’s choices—in this case, her decision to attend nearby UCLA rather than go to Columbia, even though all of her male cousins have immediately decamped for the east coast as soon as they could.

The final beats of the prologue sum up Meddy’s reality:

“You so lucky,” Big Aunt says, for the millionth time, to Ma. “She stay with you forever. You always have companion.”

Is it true? Am I doomed to stay with them forever, just because I’m the only one not heartless enough to leave? I force a smile and nod benignly as they fuss about me, and I try to look forward to the rest of my life, living here in the same house with my mom and aunts.

Chapter one opens in the present day with the entire family packed into a crowded dim sum restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley, in what is clearly a familiar ritual. The setting is a savvy choice on Sutanto’s part because it provides a lot of rich sensory texture for her to explore, as well as opportunities for her to show this family’s complex interpersonal dynamics and linguistic and cultural makeup.

For example, the process of ordering establishes that Meddy’s Mandarin is less fluent than her aunts’, who also speak to one another in Indonesian, another language Meddy isn’t fully fluent in. And look at this passage:

The table being round means all the dishes are equally within reach of everyone, but Chinese family meals aren’t complete without everyone serving food to everyone else, because doing so shows love and respect, which means we all need to do it in the most attention-seeking way possible. What’s the point of giving Big Aunt the biggest siu mai if nobody else notices?

Do you see just how much work this passage is doing? Sutanto teaches readers unfamiliar with dim sum restaurants or Chinese culture what the norms are, works in an evocative food detail (siu mai, which are delicious pork and shrimp dumplings), and establishes that Big Aunt has the most power in the family.

Similarly, as the A plot—the big wedding—is discussed, each character naturally reveals which aspect they are in charge of and, at the same time, a great deal about their personality and relationships with Meddy and the rest of the family. For example, Fourth Aunt is in charge of the music. She gives her report and then Sutanto stitches in a bit of background:

Fourth Aunt’s face goes from icy glare to satisfied smirk. “Of course, the band and I have been practicing night and day. People keep coming by the studio to listen to me sing, you know.” There are two versions of Fourth Aunt’s life story. Version one has to do with her being a celebrated child prodigy with a voice that newspapers described as “angelic” and “a national treasure.” She was well on her way to stardom, but chose to leave it all behind when all her sisters decided to move to California. Version two has her as a so-so singer who cunningly convinced her entire family to uproot themselves and move to California so she could pursue her pipe dreams of breaking out in Hollywood. One version is Fourth Aunt’s; the other is Ma’s.

Again, triple duty: we learn Fourth Aunt’s role in the upcoming wedding, we get one possibly unreliable version of the family’s immigration story, and we see the sibling rivalry between Fourth Aunt and Ma.

After we learn the basics about the wedding and Sutanto reminds us again of Meddy’s underlying conflict (she “desperately wants out” of the family business but “pretends to love all of it”), she kicks off the B plot, which introduces some immediate drama. Meddy learns, to her horror, that her mother has gone on to a dating app, pretending to be her, and has set up a date for her after chatting with someone for weeks.

Meddy’s initial response is horror and indignation, but then Sutanto dips further into her internal thoughts to show why she eventually agrees:

And, to my horror, despite the awfulness of everything, part of me is being won over, which clearly means I have lost my damn mind.

But the last time I went on a date was . . .

Last summer? Last fall? Christ on a cracker. Has it really been that long? And don’t even get me started on the last time I got laid. As my best friend Selena likes to remind me, “Girl, you need to get some before that thing closes up shop for good.” I look down at my lap, at that “thing.” Why can’t Selena just say “vagina”? You’re not gonna close up shop for good, are you?

Okay, I have just started talking to my vagina. Maybe Ma’s right. I desperately need to go out on a date. And so what if it’s been set up in the weirdest, most awkward way ever?

“Must go, ya,” Ma is saying, unaware that I’ve quietly talked myself—and my vagina—into agreeing.

This is a wonderful example of how to write internal monologue that is lively, engaging, and supremely entertaining. The quick reference to Meddy’s friend Selena feels natural and also establishes a useful secondary character. We also see Meddy’s voice coming through: her use of the phrase “Christ on a cracker” and her willingness to use the term vagina, unlike Selena, who sidestepped it.

By the end of the chapter, readers have a number of open story questions they want to see answered, which will pull them forward into the book:

• How disastrous is this blind date going to be? (Because we can already guess it will be a disaster.)

• Will the wedding be a success? Will the sibling rivalries or Meddy’s lack of enthusiasm cause problems?

• Will Meddy ever gain the courage to live the life she wants rather than the one her family wants for her?

Stay tuned for future posts that will explore how Sutanto answers—and deflects—these story questions as the novel unfolds.