Dutch author, artist questions the ordinary in debut novel

While pursuing her master's in creative writing at Oxford University, Dutch visual artist and author Bette Adriaanse picked up an unusual part-time job: delivering mail three days a week in Amsterdam.

'I'd been delivering the post in this area in Amsterdam that's quite multi-cultural and partly up and coming: the type of area that's developing and you still have a lot of poor people living there. I delivered so many letters, bills; there were people who were in serious debt... Or I had to ring the doorbell and say, 'You need to sign for this letters. It's from the courthouse.' And they would say, 'Oh, I can't read. What does it say?' And then I would read it to them and say, 'Oh. Your son has to come to court. Sorry!''

All these experience started accumulating, and over time Adriaanse noticed a series of characters forming in her imagination. 'The secretary; Mr. Lucas who was just in his house and never coming out; Ashraf, this package delivery boy... They had this theme in common: Urban isolation... I started writing their stories, and I was wondering how I would connect it. And then I realized the thing that's connecting it is me. I saw them.'

And so the idea — and structure — for her novel began to emerge: a series of stories about neighborhood residents, all connected by an unnamed — and largely unseen — postal carrier.

While some of the stories are very loosely based on people Adriaanse encountered on her route, the main character, Rus, comes from somewhere else: 'It's funny: people who read the book who know me they think: 'Oh, is Rus based on me?' and they're a bit worried. But he's the character that's mostly based on myself, even though he's a guy and he doesn't do anything,' she said, laughing.

'But there's a feeling that's central to Rus: he has to start dealing with the world and everything is overwhelming to him — the people, the sounds, the demands. He doesn't quite understand what he's supposed to do, he's not really sure that he wants to do it, but he needs to do it anyway. I've always had that feeling.'

By transferring that feeling to a character, Adriaanse was able to 'just have fun with it.' We see this especially nicely in 'the first bit when he tries to return the letter and he gets into a discussion about which side of the window is the front of the window. Then it becomes kind of funny.'

'It's fun to question all these ordinary things.'

In addition to being an author, Adriaanse also is a visual artist, graduating from the Image and Language Department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. 'Writing is very different from visual art, but I approach it in the same way. I really need to have a visual overview of the book. I make a small drawing for each section — that helps me a lot.'

'I do this thing that the girl I share a studio with finds very funny where I visualize things. I'll be sitting there with my eyes closed — pretty embarrassing — but I try to visualize what I'm going to write. I need to see everything. I need to have seen it all before I can write it. My visual art influences (my writing) in the sense that it needs to be visual.'

And while there are no illustrations in her debut novel, her background as an artist comes through in the novel's structure.

'For each character I had these scenes that I came up with and a situation they would be in. I would see it in my mind's eye. I'd see Mrs. Blue walking down her street in the early morning when it was still dark, and that will be a scene, and I would write it and see how long it would be — usually quite short. Because you'll see that every vignette is just basically one image: the characters hardly ever go from one place to another — I make a new scene for that.'

'Then I had all these little bits, and I just moved them and rearranged them on this wall where I had all the little drawings. So that's how it worked. Up until the very end it was a bit of a puzzle.'

In the end, though, everything fit together just right.

Book reading, interview

• What: Bette Andriaanse will read from her book 'Rus Like Everyone Else' after an interview Iowa City author Cate Dicharry

• When: 7 p.m. Jan. 20

• Where: Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City

• Cost: Free