The Safekeep
Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025
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3.9 • 16 Ratings
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- €6.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2025
LONGLISTED FOR THE WINGATE PRIZE 2025
An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement.
It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother's country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep - as a guest, there to stay for the season…
In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate need for control reaches boiling point. What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known.
'A thrilling, razor-sharp, perfectly plotted debut novel' Sunday Times
'Moving, unnerving and deeply sexy' Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING
'A brave and thrilling debut about facing up to the truth of history, and to one's own desires… Van der Wouden brings stunning power and control to her page-turner about trauma and repression' Justine Jordan, Booker Prize Judge 2024
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In her hauntingly brilliant debut novel, Dutch writer Yael van der Wouden takes us to the Netherlands in the very early 1960s—specifically to an incredibly quiet rural province called Overrijssel where we find Isabel. Near 30 and unfamiliar with romantic intimacy, Isabel instead busies herself with the important business of maintaining the impressive but perhaps quietly sinister family home. Her domestic order is upturned, however, with the arrival of her (disliked) brother Louis’ girlfriend, Eva—whom Louis quickly deposits at the house while he embarks upon his travels. Eva, is potentially the photo negative of Isabel, and is the subject of Isabel’s accusations around the theft of household items, until, suddenly, there’s a remarkable shift in their relationship as certain truths begin to break free. A mesmeric and beautifully coiled novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Van der Wouden sets her accomplished debut in the Netherlands in 1961, where WWII-era secrets about a family's country home come to light. Isabel, who's nearly 30 and has never been kissed, has lived alone in the house since her mother's death years earlier. She's close with her gay younger brother, Hendrik, but officious with their older sibling, Louis, who inherited the property. When the family moved there in 1944, the house was fully furnished, down to the dinnerware, cooking pots, and sheets. Isabel, fastidious and compulsive, fiercely protects each item, and is distressed when she unearths a shard from a missing plate in the vegetable garden. Then Louis shows up with his girlfriend, Eva, and announces she'll be staying at the house with Isabel while Louis travels. Eva's efforts to engage Isabel are met with rudeness and distance; Isabel resents both Eva's friendliness with the maid and her careless messes. When more items start disappearing—a teaspoon, a letter opener, a thimble—Isabel is perplexed and suspicious, and the story takes an unexpected and dramatic turn that leads to stunning realizations about the women's entwined history. Van der Wouden's sensuous writing and flair for drama make this a winner.
