Dear Jane, the debut novel of writer Pratiwi Juliani, talks about how love can prompt anyone to reveal their darkest side.

Published by Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, Pratiwti’s Dear Jane is the story of an affair between Jane and Andri, a married man, and her love for Alex, a photographer.

Jane first meets Andri, who is 20 years older and a married man with two children, incidentally in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

During that first meeting, Jane and Andri learn that they share the same love of jazz music. A conversation about that genre quickly brings them closer together. 

The longer she chats with him, the more she has a crush on him. To her, age is just a number, and he is physically attractive with his sharp jawline, soft lips and cleft chin. The topic of the discussion that connects the two then expands from jazz to art and then to life.

They go out together for years in a romantic, sexual relationship that practically makes Jane a mistress for Andri.

Being a mistress, however, is not something Jane can tolerate for too long. Andri’s promise to officially marry her never comes true. Eventually, she loses her mind and goes to a shaman asking for some black magic to ruin Andri’s family and life.

The curse does destroy Andri’s life, but it fails to get Jane to marry him and even further complicates their relationship.

In the midst of uncertainty, Alex appears in Jane’s life and somehow convinces her that he is the right man, turning a romantic drama into love triangle.

Dear Jane paved the way for Pratiwi to the prestigious Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) last year, but surprisingly, she said that initially, she had not been confident about her debut novel.

“After I wrote the script in 2017, I just ignored it, because I thought that it was just my work to complete a writing class that I joined in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan. It was also not something that I could tell my friends about, because I did not have the guts to show it,” she said.

She did not pay proper attention to the original draft of Dear Jane until it was lost when her laptop was broken. It turned out that one of her best friends saved a copy of it and later gave it to her. 

When the UWRF opened a selection for writers to take part in Indonesian Emerging Writers Program, Pratiwi planned to send her anthology, Atraksi Lumba-Lumba (A Circus of Dolphins). When signing up for the program, however, she mistakenly submitted Dear Jane, not the short story collection.  

“I pushed the wrong button,” she recalled the moment.  

Pratiwi was first unsure that she could make the cut. She later jumped for joy when the UWRF announced that she was one of five emerging writers selected to join the festival, thanks to Dear Jane. It stole the limelight, because, among 850 submissions, it was the only novel that secured a place in the program.

According to Pratiwi, Dear Jane is fiction, but the idea of the story came from her observation of real events, including the practice of black magic spells and husbands cheating on their beloved wives.

“I am the kind of person who likes to observe people, but I do not talk about what they do behind them. I just contemplate,” she said.

According to her observation, some people tended to easily make the generalization that bad deeds were committed only by those who had experienced ill-treatment themselves, such as victims of bullying or abuse.

Pratiwi said that, through her novel, she wanted to show that such simplification was not always correct. In the novel, Jane is not a victim of bullying, but she has the heart to do whatever it takes to marry Andri.

“Loving or being loved too much can make us manipulative and hurt others,” Pratiwi said.

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