The Safekeep
Yael van der Wouden · 2024
A fastidious Dutch woman's ordered life is disrupted by a visiting woman and a growing awareness of what her family's possessions actually are. Van der Wouden's debut is a taut, slow-burning story of suspicion and desire in a postwar Dutch house, told through the accumulation of domestic detail.
The case against
For most of its length the novel is an erotic two-hander in a tense house: Isabel's compulsions, Eva's intrusions, the inventory of who owns what. The turn meant to give the book its weight arrives late, and it lands as a tidy mechanism rather than an earned development. It is signposted early enough that the closing pages mostly confirm what you already guessed.
Best of Last 10 Years · the Pro canon
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