It’s the 1960s in a rural part of The Netherlands and Isabel lives alone in a large, rambling house, her mother dead and her brothers Hendrik and Louis off living their own lives. Always a solitary soul and an outsider, she becomes inextricably linked to the house, its walls and contents all tangible links to her mother. She spends her days obsessively ordering the house, making sure everything is where it belongs. 

A childhood of leaving and loss has left Isabel cold and withdrawn but beneath the irritability and anxious need for order is a yearning. When her carefree brother Louis needs to travel for work and asks to leave Eva, his latest in a long line of girlfriends, in the house with Isabel, Isabel is deeply irritated by this invasion of her space. But as irritability turns to something else, Eva’s presence brings a whole new side of Isabel to light, in more ways than one.

This is an absolutely striking and enthralling debut. Exploring themes of displacement, loneliness and loss, need, anger and burning desire, childhood memory and the legacies of war, this is an atmospheric, absorbing and highly charged read. Isabel is an intriguing and multi-layered character, and the narrative style, often breathless, adds to the tension, the anxiety, the sense of awkwardness and volatility that pervades both the story and Isabel’s own inner life. She has lived a life of loneliness until someone comes into it, filling a void and unleashing a desire, an all-consuming need for connection, for touch.

The writing is atmospheric, with great care given to creating a sense of place, the breezy, creaking house and garden almost becoming a character in itself. With transportive, immersive writing and a plot turn that is absolutely captivating, exploring a particular time in history through the compelling story of one lonely woman, I loved this.

***
The Safekeep is published by Viking Books on May 30th. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my DRC.

***

Yael van der Wouden is a writer and teacher. She currently lectures in creative writing and comparative literature in the Netherlands. Her essay on Dutch identity and Jewishness, “On (Not) Reading Anne Frank”, has received a notable mention in The Best American Essays 2018. The Safekeep is her debut novel and was acquired in hotly-contested nine-way auctions in both the UK and the US. Rights have sold in a further twelve countries.