THE SAFEKEEP (Penguin Books 2024) is a literary jewel, a masterpiece of characterisation, a thematic wonder. Author Yael Van Der Wouden has created a brilliant story about passion, desire, family, duty, intergenerational trauma, beauty, love, forgiveness and responsibility.
This amazing novel offers superb writing from the first page. The character of Isabel and her solitary and disciplined life, set in The Netherlands in 1961, is delivered with grace, authenticity and compassion in gorgeous prose. Isabel lives in her late mother’s country home. She has a congenial relationship with her two brothers (who live elsewhere), but a claustrophobic situation comes to a head when her brother Louis arrives to visit with his unlikeable girlfriend, Eva, and then leaves … inviting Eva to stay with Isabel until his return. Neither woman is happy with this arrangement and the environment is frosty and standoffish. The longer Eva stays, the less happy Isobel becomes with her lack of control in her own house. But then something happens, which leads to a revelation, which uncovers a secret that threatens everything Isabel has ever known about herself and her family.
The book is well-observed, evocative, atmospheric, layered, troubling, haunting, moving, bold and accomplished.
The first three quarters of this book is masterfully managed, and the characterisations particularly are a joy to read. The author writes great sex, desire and passion – something notoriously difficult to get right – and this elevates the domestic environment of the rural home to something almost mystical and other-worldly.
But at that mark, the book suddenly pivots with unexpected speed and ferocity. As a reader, you are forced to confront that everything you thought this book was about is a chimera, a haze, a front for what it is actually about. The last quarter is devastating, cruel, surprising, heart-stopping and completely unpredictable. Suddenly, every small seed planted in the previous pages makes complete sense. Phrases or scenes that seemed arbitrary take on great significance. The realisation strikes: this book is about something else entirely. Its themes and central question are far from what you thought or expected. It makes you want to immediately begin from the start and re-read everything, with this new knowledge of what is about to be uncovered.
I’m being deliberately oblique because to say too much would be to spoil the subtle and nuanced bombshell planted by this author. It is best to enter this world knowing nothing. And when the story shapeshifts into another beast entirely, you will wonder at your own naivety. I absolutely loved this book so much. Read it. Read it and weep, read it and laugh, read it and shake your head at its astonishing audacity and the author’s skill in pulling a metaphorical rabbit from a hat.
THE SAFEKEEP is already a fantastic read but the twist only makes it deeper, more satisfying, more thought-provoking and more incredible. Highly recommend.