The Safekeep

Yael Van Der Wouden’s debut novel, set in a 1960s Netherlands scarred by the Second World War, confounds expectations. Every time you think you know where it’s going, it shifts course. What looks at first like stodgy historical fiction chronicling the daily doldrums of Isabel, a prim loner living in the house where her mother recently died, makes its first big swerve after her caddish brother drops off his latest girlfriend, Eva, to stay with Isabel—who can’t stand her—while he travels. By turns erotic, heartbreaking, and incandescent in its outrage on behalf of the invisible victims of a cataclysm that reverberated for decades after the peace treaties were signed, The Safekeep packs an emotional wallop that is matched by its moral urgency.

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