The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden was longlisted for The Booker Prize 2024.The book is set 15 years after the end of World War 2, in Overijssel, a rural area in northern Netherlands.
Isabel’s mother has died fairly recently and she’s living in the family home which has been inherited by her brother Louis. Her brother Hendrik has already moved out and lives with Sebastian. Isabel is a rather sour young woman who lives a boring and grim life with just a young maid for company. She uses her mother’s favourite crockery only once a week, it’s kept for good. Her world is turned upside down when Louis brings a young woman to the house, he’s apparently engaged to Eva and he wants her to live in the house while he is abroad working. Eva couldn’t be more different from Isabel who until then had been in charge of the house. Eva insists on sleeping in the dead mother’s bedroom, despite Isabel’s complaints. She’s lazy and untidy and Isabel hates her, when things begin to disappear from the house Isabel is suspicious.
Surprisingly the relationship between Eva and Isabel takes a wild change, and in chapter 10 it looks like Louis has been cast aside for Isabel. You might know that I can always do without the bedroom action in books, but I suppose it is required in this one. I was glad when that part was over with though!
This book is about the war and its aftermath, and how Dutch people just got on with their lives after it, giving no thought to the Jewish people who in some cases had been supplanted by non Jewish Dutch families in their homes. This is a well written book which seems to have been written in English as there is no mention of a translator, but there are a few clunky bits. On occasion people startled instead of were startled or started. Perhaps that is an Americanism. I’m sure that there’s mention of a rung on the stairs instead of a step on the stairs, but Dutch staircases resemble ladders so much I can see how that could happen.
As it happens I know the town of Zwolle which is the setting of the book, it’s not far from my brother’s house, and I know how tough a time the people had there during WW2. Most of the men had been taken away to work for the Germans in their factories, making munitions and such, slave labour. The men who managed to escape had to live wild in forests in freezing weather, and the Germans starved the entire country and stole everything they could. I can understand why some might want to keep any advantage they could when the war came to an end.