The Safekeep, shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize is a debut novel by Van Der Wouden. This is story of love, set in 1961 Netherlands, when even then women had few rights and choices. This is my book review The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden.

Isobel

In the beginning we meet a spinster, unhappy with her lot in life and pretty much everyone in it. She is not so old as you might think in the beginning, but well beyond the proper marrying age. Isobel is socially awkward, with one suitor she loaths. She cares for the family home while one brother flaunts his gay tendencies with his live in lover and another brother pushes her to marry and move from the family home.

Isobel, who is suspicious of everyone who comes into the house, finds herself in an uncomfortable position when her eldest brother deposits his latest girlfriend to live in the house with Isobel. A temporary arrangement she is told while her brother travels abroad. Isobel is angry and rude to the guest and wants only to be left alone.

Eve

The guest, Eva, has her own secrets and wishes, ones that spark some long hidden memories from Isobel’s childhood. And when the two women fall in love with each other, an unexpected love story develops, in a time when two women in love is beyond comprehension for most people.

The novel has some fairly graphic sexual encounter scenes, but Van Der Wouden’s writing is lyrical and beautiful and the novel unfolds in an emotional way with believable characters, story line and plot twist.

****Four stars for The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden

Thank you for reading my book review The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden. See last week’s book review The Echo of Old Books by Barbara Davis.

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