The safekeep : a novel /

The year is 1961, and ever since her mother died, Isabel's routine has been largely the same. She wants for nothing, spending her days counting their possessions, evading her neighbor Johan's advances, and blaming the maid for all of the items that have seemingly gone missing. When Isabel's absent brother Louis suddenly brings home Eva, his new girlfriend, and requests that Isabel let her stay in her house, their mother's house, Isabel is naturally taken aback. However, as the two women become closer, Isabel's feelings toward Eva transform from distaste into desire, and Isabel finds herself changing. As she grapples with her own internalized homophobia, racism, and resistance to change as well as the realities that she's been desperately trying to ignore, Isabel slowly discovers herself as she begins to shrug off the invisible shackles of her mother's legacy and teachings. Van der Wouden's debut novel is rife with intrigue and Isabel's unease about everything from the missing items to her newly explored sexuality. For readers who appreciate introspective historical fiction and LGBTQ+ coming out stories.

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. Agent: Anna Stein, CAA. (May)

Two women spend a fraught summer together in the Dutch countryside. When she first meets Eva, Isabel is not just unimpressed; she finds her worthy of mockery. The latest in her brother Louis' long list of girlfriends, Eva has cheaply dyed hair and a cheaply made dress and, when they all go out for dinner, doesn't know what scallops are. Van der Wouden's brilliant debut novel opens in 1961 in the Netherlands; World War II has ended, but the trauma of the war years is etched as deeply into the Dutch landscape as are the craters left by actual bombs. Isabel has become a caretaker for the old house she and her siblings grew up in. She spends her isolated days in regimented fashion, polishing silver and visiting the post office. "She belonged to the house in the sense that she had nothing else, no other life than the house," van der Wouden writes. Isabel's routine--and, eventually, everything she thought she knew about herself and her family--is disrupted when Eva comes to spend a few weeks with her while Louis is away for work. Even van der Wouden's spare prose gives way to the lush mystery Eva carries with her: "How quickly did the belly of despair turn itself over into hope, the give of the skin of overripe fruit." This is a beautifully realized book, nearly perfect, as van der Wouden quietly explores the intricate nuances of resentment-hued sibling dynamics, the discovery of desire (and the simultaneous discovery of self), queer relationships at a time when they went unspoken, and the legacy of war and what it might mean to have been complicit in its horrors. A brilliant debut, as multifaceted as a gem. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.