Book Review: The Safekeep, by Yael van der Wouden

I first picked up The Safekeep thanks to a glowing review and the irresistible lure of a Dutch setting. A postwar novel unfolding in the Dutch countryside in the early 1960s? Sold. (Especially after reading The Assault by Harry Mulisch a few weeks ago, another fabulous Dutch novel.) What I found was a strange, unsettling, and surprisingly compelling novel that was equal parts moody, creepy romance, psychological study, and unsettling historical reckoning, with a brilliant, sharp plot twist at the end.

The story centers around Isabel, a rigid, hyper-controlled, very repressed young woman living alone in her late mother’s country house. Her entire identity seems wrapped in inventories, routines, and a weird sort of propriety. Enter Eva, her brother Louis’s new loud, messy, unrefined girlfriend, Isabel’s opposite in every way. Louis asks Isabel if Eva can stay in their big house while he’s away in Europe, and then drops Eva off like forgotten luggage and vanishes for weeks. It’s a classic odd-couple setup, but with the tension ratcheted way up. Soon, objects begin disappearing, and uptight Isabel’s paranoia ramps up to eleven. Soon, though, the friction between the two women becomes something hotter, stranger, and far more complicated than either of them is prepared to handle.

Let me be clear: this novel has a lot of erotic, sensual sex scenes, and I’ll readily admit, those passages were not exactly my favorite to wade through. But they’re integral to the driving force of the book, namely, the messy, love-hate desire that blooms between Isabel and Eva. I think some people might mistake the book for a romance about forbidden longing, at least for the first two-thirds, and frankly, if it had continued on this way, I would have lost my patience with it.

But the book deepens is in its post-WWII undercurrent. Themes of guilt, dispossession, and identity started to slowly reveal themselves, brilliantly. Isabel’s obsessive attachment to the house—and terror of losing it—takes on a different meaning as the story starts exploring the Netherlands’ uneasy relationship with its wartime past. It becomes clear that both women are carrying some pretty major secrets, and that their tense relationship is about much more than bruised pride or sexual awakening.

Once I resigned myself to the seemingly endless dramatic lesbian sex scenes, I found myself completely absorbed in the story. The characters are messy and relatable. The Dutch setting resonated with me, even though it takes place years before my own love affair with the Netherlands.  It’s a strange, beautifully written novel that rewards the patient reader. I’m glad I took the plunge.