Drafts of a Suicide Note

by Mandy-Suzanne Wong

“As far as I know, you can only die once…” But when Aetna Simmons disappears from her lonely Bermuda cottage, she leaves behind not one but ten suicide notes. Ten different suicide notes. And no other trace to speak of, not even a corpse, as if she’d never existed.

Drafts of a Suicide Note tells the tale of the darkly enigmatic love letter written by Kenji Okada-Caines, a petty criminal who once exposited on English literary classics and now, marooned on his native isle, nurtures an obsession with Aetna’s writing. His murky images of a woman with ten voices and no face launch him into waking nightmares, driving him to confront his lifetime’s worth of failures as a scholar, lover, and opiate addict. His wild conspiracy theories of Aetna as an impostor ten times over lead him to the doorstep of the Japanese mother who turned her back on him—and to the horrifying discovery that the great love of his life isn’t who she seems to be. Kenji’s is a story of dire misunderstandings and the truths we hide even from the ones we love.

Genres: Literary Fiction

454 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2019

About the author

Mandy-Suzanne Wong is a Bermudian writer of fiction and essays. She is the author of The Box, a novel (Graywolf, House of Anansi); Drafts of a Suicide Note (Regal House), a Foreword INDIES literary-fiction finalist and PEN Open Book Award nominee; Listen, We All Bleed (New Rivers), a PEN/Galbraith-nominated essay collection and EcoLit Best Book of 2021; and Awabi, a duet of short stories, winner of the Digging Press Chapbook Series Award. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arcturus, Black Warrior Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, Litro, and Necessary Fiction, winning recognition in the Best of the Net, Aeon Award, and Eyelands Flash Fiction competitions.

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ten unique suicide notes, no dead body, and a washed-up academic who thinks literary scholarship can solve this mystery. Rife with innovative textual experiments, touches of humor, and dramatic intrigue, Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s Drafts of a Suicide Note is a challenging and satisfying read. In a book full of mistrust and backstabs, truth only matters if self-gain comes with it, and this gloriously dark book radiates with each character’s messed-up version of light. Wong’s debut novel twists conventions and wrings something new.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

The suicide note happens on the threshold of the only empty moment. Yet it comes into its own to a clamor of lawyers, underwriters, creditors, and priests. Its composition proceeds in the most absolute of conscious solitudes, where emptiness eats into words as meaning trickles out. But the creation comes of age only when survivors begin to trawl for signs. This is the paradox of the suicide note, born to public duties out of sentiments too private to be understood.

I first encountered Mandy-Suzanne Wong through her brilliantly original novel The Box, which was shortlisted for the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize, US and Canada.

Drafts of a Suicide Note was an earlier novel, which has Kenji Okada-Caines, the half-black-Bermudian half-Japanese scion of a leading local asset manager (while he co-runs a confidential information disposal business with his married lover, while dealing designer drugs and studying the works of Thomas Hardy) becoming intrigued by a newspaper headline:

Missing Woman Leaves 10 Suicide Notes.

I found it in an email digest from Bernews. The Royal Gazette led with the same story.

In connection with Aetna Simmons of Suffering Lane, St. George’s, who was reported missing by her landlady last week Monday, a BPS spokesperson said, “Police can confirm that a stack of ten documents was found in Ms. Simmons’ home. The content of these documents brings us to the unfortunate conclusion that Ms. Simmons chose to end her life.”

One suicide note is an unfortunate conclusion. Ten is no conclusion but the opposite. 10 Suicide Notes? That’s a provocation. As far as I know, you can only die once.

And when he manages to get hold of a copy of the notes from a policeman to whom he supplies drugs he becomes even more obsessed, seeing them as a work of art as well as clues to a potential mystery:

A series of drafts. Each meant to replace the one before as the comprehensive portrait of Aetna’s final moments. At the same time, all ten narrate a longer story.

It begins with a cry for help (AS1) full of self-loathing and guilt, a plea in hope of being rescued from herself. Later she decides (AS2) that the escape she has in mind is death. But at this point, she doesn’t quite believe it. She plays with the idea. Embittered (AS3), she starts getting serious. She drafts a credible suicide note that I can envision on monogrammed stationery or inside a card embossed with a hibiscus. She types it on a scrap of copy paper. And there’s a chance that it’s unfinished: maybe she’s not ready after all. What she writes next is indirect (AS4); but if you get the reference, you know she’s thinking hard about specifics: what will death feel like?

Now, is this the crux of the portfolio? Or are this page and the next irrelevant (AS4, AS5), mixed in with her papers when some copper dropped a bunch of files? Maybe we’ll never know. But I think Aetna’s bitterness turned acrid, her thoughts obsessive. Serious ideations (AS6): detailed, organized, feasible. Enter rage and violence (AS7), and at last her intention is unmistakable (AS8). She tidies her affairs (AS9), scribbles the denouement all in a rush (AS10) like she’s run out of time. Or she can’t bear to give herself the time to change her mind.

His investigations lead him to believe that the missing Aetna was faking suicide notes for a US insurer, Clocktower, with a branch in Bermuda, who are also clients of his parents' asset manager, a complex conspiracy that may involve his own family, his lover and her husband:

It trickled out. Well, most of it Clocktower. Masami, Myrtle Trimm. I didn't talk about drugs or say much about Doreen except that she was a dismal soul who needed money -
"Wait wait wait wait. Wait. Hold on," said Nabi. "You're telling me Aetna Simmons was writing fake suicide notes for an insurance company so they wouldn't have to pay death benefits."
"Clocktower, right."
"But she quit for some reason. And decided, Lord have mercy, to expose the company. By leaving evidence on a flash drive or some thing that she - I mean. that she hid in her landlady's stuffed cat?"

Now a novel written by an author whose other work I've loved and set in the offshore insurance industry should have been perfect for me. Unfortunately the style is the sort of sub-Pynchon zany conspiracy thriller which is close to my least favourite literary genre, and in 450+ pages the characters and the author clearly had rather more interest in the tangled plot than this reader.

2.5 stars.

[Judy Crozier · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a tale - unusually set in Bermuda and unusually entirely expressed in Bermudian. It's a version of English utterly its own, so much so that it comes close to being a character in its own right. The novel is charming and gripping and horrifying. Funny and sad and frivolous and dark. A story, you begin by thinking, of Kenji Okada-Caines, the drug dealer with a conscience who falls over the mystery of the ten drafts of a suicide note. But then the story draws in, and the centre shifts from Kenji, whose Japanese mother's calm and frosty control are the bane of his life, to include his bigamous and wildly religious girlfriend, whose feckless charm hides a mighty Techie brain.


But no more, or it will be too much. You will have to discover this Bermudian world for yourself. Dive into the sun and its shadows, the seas and the slang. What a feat!

[Teri Drake-Floyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightfully disturbing journey into one man's obsession with the psychological state of another. Set in Bermuda, the locale seems to be a character all its own; providing a rich, colorful tapestry and background to this engaging and mysterious novel. Each character is its own self-contained mystery, full of humor, neurosis, and obsession; each of them engaging and charming and uniquely lovable. Then of course, the 10 drafts of a suicide note. Each a different perspective into the mind of a disturbed woman, as told through the eyes of the man obsessed with the case. This novel takes the reader on two journeys - one, to discover the motive of a woman who would write ten "goodbyes", each one different than the one before; and two, the ones left behind - those complicated people swirling about in a beautiful world, bouncing into each other and leaving their own special kind of mark.

[Hayley]

I was so excited to find a book by a Bermudian! But couldn’t get into it, not sure I ever understood the plot or who the characters were, each chapter I had no idea what was happening, and the “name-dropping” of Bermudian places felt quite forced.

[Rebecca Baum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s DRAFTS OF A SUICIDE NOTE is a smart, elegant, genre-defying exploration of our propensity to flee our true selves, especially when those selves are at odds with our family and culture of origin. The protagonist, Kenji Okada-Caines, is a chronic underachiever except for his white-glove drug-dealing, and even that soon unravels. Possessed of an outsized intellect, he has cultivated a persona of jaded cool with which he glosses over his failure to launch—as a Thomas Hardy scholar, as a writer, and as a true partner to the (married and unavailable) love of his life. Born of a Japanese mother and a black, Bermudian father, he’s felt adrift all his life, an outsider, even on an island whose every tourist spot, pink-sand beach, and colonial architectural vestige he knows intimately. When he becomes haunted by visions of a mysterious woman and her bizarre “oeuvre” of ten suicide notes, the noose of his self-deception tightens. Expect clever, noir-esque turns of phrases, intriguing characters, and fascinating diversions into literary criticism, finance, and industrial data destruction; and a lingering discomfort that, despite our best efforts, our sins and shortcomings can never truly be erased.

[Rich Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

An alluring mystery that is wholly impressive in how it outmaneuvers the reader at every turn. Wong deliciously navigates through an elaborate design of deception and intrigue. Every answer brings with it more questions; every suicide note, more turmoil inflicted on Kenji’s personal life. The characters have been drawn with such beautifully visceral flaws that their arrogant certainty and suffocating self-doubt become our own. Wong’s amusing style of prose keeps Kenji’s devastating journey enlivened — yet haunting. The result is a well-crafted novel that succeeds in landing every emotional punch. A stellar debut from a promising new author.

[Heather Siegel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Bermudian man’s curiosity about a woman leaving behind 10 suicide notes leads to an unhealthy obsession. What follows is a literary and “psychological autopsy” of the deceased woman's life, as well as the unraveling of his own melancholic and complex love relationship. Beautifully-written, Wong has created a gorgeous, moody world that is rich with vibrant Caribbean language, voice, and landscapes. I love novels about obsession. DRAFTS is a stand-out tale that explores both the nature of obsession and its terrible consequences. I won’t soon forget Kenji.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure how I came across this book in my Libby app but I'm super happy to be introduced to Wong's gorgeous, if somewhat trippy, novel. With its noirish, subversive plot and a dexterous switch-hit of cultures and languages, I feel like I've actually seen Bermuda. It's dazzling and strange. Perhaps under-edited, the text unfurls in heaps of unreliable first-person (I think a better editor would have shaved 75-100 pages) ... but simultaneously, 'Drafts' also feels intensely claustrophobic, cramped, marooned in its own weird little boat.

[Ang]

Bermuda

[Noemi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gem. I highly recommend it. Can’t believe only 3 people rated this.

[Rodriguez- Constransitch · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 - almost DNF. plot and characters are interesting, but pacing is really off. repetitive at points and slowly, painfully drawn out to the end.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.75 ⭐️

This was very nearly a DNF when I put the book down 100 pages in, and never wanted to go back. It is a SLOW beginning before I became invested in what was happening. Eventually I decided the writing style was beautiful and clever enough that I wanted to give it a second chance. The middle majority of the book was SUPER FUN, and I was so glad I came back! Annnndddd then the ending. Leaving spoiler free, but I was not super happy with how this story concluded. So, in summary, gorgeous writing, but not my favorite story.