Yael ven der Wouden’s debut novel is a wonder. It begins as a novel of manners and evolves into an erotic suspense thriller with keen historical implications.
It is 1961, 16 years after the end of World War II. The rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel has a life that is as it should be: led by routine and discipline.
The house is Isabel’s world. Uncle Karel had found it for her, older brother Hendrik and younger brother Louis in the winter of 1944. It was the tail end of the war and famine was tearing through the west of the Netherlands. The siblings were sent ahead across this canal-filled country on a boat. Uncle Karel met them, as only children were allowed to cross. Their mother came later, their father having perished months before. The house is completely intact, filled with furniture.
“The war was stored in [Isabel’s] memory unclearly, all out of order … Bombs fell on Rotterdam. Trucks rolled over the loose bricks of the Sarphatistraat, where she and her mother got their pickles … Once, one cold evening when Isabel was 13, they were having dinner and there came a loud knock on the door that wouldn’t stop … they watched from their bedroom window as outside an upset woman banged on their doors and windows and screamed and screamed and screamed.”
That scream echoes in silence through this house where Isabel is the gatekeeper, the personification of a safekeep, keeping a daily inventory of all the house’s belongings. Her days are spent caring for the house and gardens with the help of a young charge, whom she treats with disdain. Change is anathema to Isabel, as are most people. She nurses her solitude the way others nurse their lovers.
The novel begins with Isabel discovering a shard of one of her mother’s beloved plates, decorated with hares, while doing her gardening. She puts the shard in a handkerchief in her purse as she goes with Hendrik, who lives with his lover Sebastian in another city, to meet Louis for dinner in the town, where he lives with his latest paramour.
Louis is notoriously late, always bringing his latest flame who the elder siblings know will not remain in his life for very long. When Louis eventually shows up with Eva, Isabel observes that “she had a violently peroxided bob, a badly made dress – the bodice had been sewn too tight and the hems were messy. Her face was very red. She was pretty in a way men thought women ought to be pretty.”
“Good lord,” Isabel said, and Hendrik snorted. Isabel retreats into silence for the evening.
Though Isabel is the sole inhabitant of the family home since their mother’s death a year before, Uncle Karel has entrusted it to Louis, not to Isabel or Hendrik.
Soon after the dinner, Louis visits Isabel and tells her he has to leave for three weeks and doesn’t want Eva to be alone in their apartment. He insists that Eva come and stay with Isabel for the remainder of the season. It will be good for both of them.
Eva’s presence disrupts the order of Isabel’s life. Soon, valuable objects go missing, and Isabel’s frustration with her unwanted housemate becomes an obsession.
Van der Wouden’s writing is taut, without a single gratuitous phrase or description. The writing reminds of the postwar writing of Graham Greene and Anita Brookner – but then it becomes a thriller and something more.
In the end, The Safekeep was as astonishing as it was unexpected. A great discovery, and a great candidate for this year’s Booker Prize.
The Safekeep, by Yael van der Wouden (Viking, $38 hb), is out now.
