‘The Safekeep’ by Yael Van der Wouden (2024) – 258 pages
This outstanding novel ‘The Safekeep’ is the compelling story of a lonely Netherlands woman. It takes place in 1961.
“Isabel didn’t mind it, the move to the east. She hadn’t any friends in the city, and hadn’t any friends in the country, either.”
Notice that although the woman author is from the Netherlands and has an obviously Dutch name, there is no translator. This novel was written in English.
In some novels, all of the characters are so nice, so thoughtful, that I can’t empathize or identify with them at all. Fortunately ‘The Safekeep’ does not have that problem at all. Not one of the characters here is too nice, least of all Isabel. They can all often be quite mean or nasty. The novel gets high marks for realism.
Nearly 30 years old, Isabel lives alone in her family home. Often she is rude to the point of cruelty. Isabel was “lonely and bitter and took after her mother too much”. About the only people she associates with are her two brothers, the ladies man Louis and Hendrik who lives with his boyfriend. Isabel does have a young maid who comes in nearly every day whom Isabel always suspects of stealing her mother’s heirlooms.
And then Louis asks if his current girlfriend Eva can stay with Isabel at the family home for a month or two while he is on a business trip. Isabel reluctantly agrees to this arrangement, because Louis could kick her out of the family house since it actually is his, him being the oldest child.
With the arrival of Eva, everything changes for Isabel.
“Isabel had spent a lifetime alone. She had spent a whole life without this woman, without her in this house, and now an hour. And now her heart raced at the sound of tires on gravel, the sight of her: first a dot, then a person, then a known shape, coming closer.”
Some graphic love or sex scenes ensue.
‘The Safekeep’ is supremely intense. It kept my mind fully occupied while I was reading it. The story here has the most original plot of any novel I have read this year. I read it very quickly. I won’t give any hints as to the surprise turn the novel takes toward the end.
‘The Safekeep’ is a Must Read. This is one novel you will not forget.
Grade: A
Tony's Book World 
Posted by Janakay | YouMightAsWellRead on September 9, 2024 at 4:37 PM
Hi Tony! (my second attempt at commenting; if the first shows up, please delete one! Word Press isn’t cooperating today). I agree there was a lot to like here — Isabel’s a strong character; the family relationships are well done & believable and it centers on a little known and fascinating episode in WWII history, i.e., the Dutch unwillingness to welcome their surviving Jewish population or even make moderately humane accommodations to the returnees. That being said, the novel didn’t quite work for me. I found Isabel’s transformation (she’s a great character, I agree)unconvincing; the sex scenes too overdone & extensive and the ending a little too pat. But — the book was well worth my time and I don’t regret reading it! My grade, however? B/B- !
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Posted by Anokatony on September 9, 2024 at 4:57 PM
Hi Janakay,
I guess the point where we disagree about ‘The Safekeep’ is that I did not find Isabel’s transformation unconvincing at all. It is those emotionally locked up like Isabel who fall the hardest.
And that it dealt with this little known aspect of post-World War II history kept me interested intellectually. This European post-war treatment of the concentration camp survivors was something I had not even considered.
I believe that ‘The Safekeep’ should at least make the Booker shortlist on Sept 16, but we shall see. :)
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Posted by Lisa Hill on September 9, 2024 at 5:44 PM
This reminds me of a novel about two sisters long estranged who for reasons gradually revealed in the novel have a difficult reconciliation which transforms them both in unexpected ways. A Sister in My House by Linda Olsson — well the title tells you everything: not My Sister, and emphatically My House. It was a novel which depicted how hard it is to get used to someone in the house when you’re used to solitude, and maybe that’s what Jana is alluding to, that a transformation to sociability isn’t so easy to achieve.
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Posted by Anokatony on September 9, 2024 at 6:16 PM
Hi Lisa,
It is a somewhat different situation here as Isabel has been isolated and lonely for too long, and she was ready to fall hard. That Isabel is living in the house that Eva’s family owned before the war provides some heavy irony here.
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Posted by Lisa Hill on September 10, 2024 at 3:46 AM
Yes, as you say, ‘falling hard’. It often comes about because of loneliness and desperation…
Of course (more optimistically) it can just be because after giving up, one meets the love of one’s life!
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Posted by My Favorite Fiction I Have Read in 2024 | Tony's Book World on December 10, 2024 at 5:36 PM
[…] ‘The Safekeep by Yael Van der Wouden (2024) – In some novels, all of the characters are so nice, so thoughtful, that I can’t empathize or identify with them at all. Fortunately ‘The Safekeep’ does not have that problem at all. Not one of the characters here is too nice, least of all Isabel. They can all often be quite mean or nasty. The novel gets high marks for realism. […]
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