I began 2025 with The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden and it was an excellent start to my reading year.

I am loathe to say too much about the plot (I think the blurb gives too much away and, if you know a bit about post-WWII history, you won’t need to get far into the story to understand where it’s going).

Set in the Dutch countryside in 1961, it’s focused on a woman, Isabel, living in her late mother’s large home. Isabel is set in her ways, and her routines are disrupted when her brother insists that his girlfriend, Eva, stay with Isabel while he works overseas for the summer. Eva is the antithesis of Isabel and as the days progress, tensions rise.

van der Wouden creates vivid characters with an economy of words –

Eva took up space with a loud restlessness, a bee stuck in a room with all the windows shut. She touched things, talked about the things she touched, asked questions about them…

Isabel is not an endearing character – she’s judgemental and prickly, yet her vulnerabilities are clear from the outset, which invites the reader to feel sympathy. Isabel is lonely, and unsure about her future (most likely as a spinster), and her lack of experience in any type of relationship (friendship or otherwise) plagues her –

She was not wanted. That was the long and the short of it: she had learned want, briefly and hungrily. A span of a day, two days. She had learned the shape of it, the quick taste of it. She had reached out, foolishly, and she was not wanted in return.

That said, my one criticism of the book was that Isabel does some bold things that felt contrived and I wasn’t entirely convinced. Again, without giving anything away, I rethought my intial impressions of Isabel when I got to the final section of the book, told from a different perspective (this final section is without question the strongest and also the most creative).

It takes a particular skill to make inanimate objects ‘characters’ and this is what sets this story apart. The dinner service patterned with leaping hares, silver cutlery, blue baking dishes, a writing desk with a lock and key – all of these things play a role.  Equally, the house itself is pivotal to the story, and what it means to each of the characters varies.

Bound to this house, he said. As if it was a tether and not a shelter.

I was reminded of  Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House and, more recently, Unsettled Ground, by Claire Fuller – all three books explore the grief associated with a ‘non-death’ loss (disenfranchised grief) and I think stories about houses strike me hard because of my own history with a much-loved house (described in my review of The Dutch House).

3.5/5

He liked a good honest meal, is what he liked, and Isabel should come by when the opperdoezer potatoes were in season because his mother made the best…