The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden

It is now the ninth day of February, and it has rained here every day this sodden year. That has meant that I have been cooped up indoors most days. On the positive side I have read more than I have done in a long while. Yesterday I finished reading The Safekeep, the debut novel by a Dutch author called Yael Van Der Wouden. It was short-listed for The Booker Prize in 2024. I ordered the book because a Yorkshire friend of mine told me that she was reading it. When the book arrived, I made the mistake of reading all the snippets of reviews by other writers in the front of the book, by such people as Rachel Joyce, Ann Enright, Tracy Chevalier and Maggie O’Farrell, and noticed they were all women. This made me slightly wary, wrongly thinking that this was going to be chick-lit written for a female audience. It also made me aware of what to expect in the plot.

The book is set in The Netherlands in 1961 fifteen years after the war. The main protagonist is Isabel who lives alone apart from a maid Neelke who comes in to help with the housework. She has two brothers Hendrik and Louis. Hendrick has a partner Sebastian who Isabel initially dislikes because he looks ‘foreign’. When they meet up at a restaurant Louis introduces his new girlfriend Eva who Isabel also takes an instant dislike to. The story gets underway when Louis asks Isabel if Eva can stay at her house for a month while he is away on business. I knew from reading the publicity blurbs that Isabel and Eva would form a relationship. The tension between them is electric. The writing is very erotic, especially chapter 10. The romance isn’t the main story however. Gradually a deep dark shameful secret is revealed which concerns Dutch history during and after the war. I won’t tell you any more in case you read the book yourself. I don’t think The Safekeep is one of the best books I have ever read, not by any means. It is a page turner though, I had to know what happened next. It is a very promising debut novel, and I think a lot remains unsaid. There could be another very powerful story to be told if the author wanted to explore the history of the characters further, especially during WW11. I will look out for more writing from Yael Van Der Wouden in the future.