“Little baby Jesus everywhere. They have no problem letting Jews into their homes as long as they’re carved from wood, do they”
“What did people who spoke of joy know of what it meant, to sleep and dream only of the whistle of planes and knocks at the door and on windows and to wake with a hand at one’s throat – one’s own hand, at one’s own throat. What did they know of not speaking for days, of not having known the touch of another, never having known, of want and of not having felt the press of skin to one’s own, and what did they know of a house that only ever emptied out. Of animals dying and fathers dying and mothers dying and finding bullet holes in the barks of trees right below hearts carved around names of people who weren’t there and the bloody lip of a sibling and what did – what did she know of – what could she possibly know of what it –“
Yael van der Wouden’s debut, The Safekeep (Avid Reader Press 2024), another slim novel from the Booker longlist, is a wet and sticky atmospheric historical fiction that finds two girls from the war reconciling their pasts as adults in a house that defined them both, a house that is just as much a character in the novel as they are. And however improbable, it’s a love story.
Set in a rural Dutch village in 1961, the novel centers on Isabella. She lives in their home, alone now after their mother died, caring for the things their mother had loved and knowing the house has been promised to her brother when he decides to settle down. Enter Eva. Another possible ‘wife’ candidate and someone Isabel hates from the moment she meets.
Isabella is unyielding and rigid, particular and set in her ways. Her brothers have accepted her peculiarity. When her brother insists his new girl, Eva, stay in the house with her while he’s away, she refuses. But she can’t refuse him – it’s not her house. That bitterness makes her dislike Eva even more. Isabella like things just so, and she’s convinced the maids are stealing. When Eva comes to stay for a few weeks, she becomes even more paranoid – counting silverware and keeping an inventory. Her paranoia and distrust help build an atmosphere that eventually spills over into sexual frustration and near obsession.
But the best parts of this novel are the unpeeling of Eva’s history, of seeing how two young girls crossed paths and lives during the war. I wish there had been more of Eva’s diary entries, but instead we get more of Isabella trying to reconcile a truth that she’d been blind to while also struggling to accept her own sexuality.
Much like the rest of the longlist, there is little action but a bit of heart. It is sticky on your skin, like the juice of a pear running down your chin and mingling with the sweat of someone you want.
Read this book.
Booker count: 7 of 13
A Girl Named Tommi 