By Yael van der Wouden
Penguin, Paperback, £9.99
Call Me By Your Name meets Girl With A Pearl Earring in this consuming and simmering debut novel set in a rural town in the Netherlands. The Safekeep is one of those rare books where the things left unsaid speak as much as the ones on the page, and the yearning and the melancholy and the lust are almost tangible.
The story is for the most part told by Isabel’s point of view, and she is a woman who has clearly developed several traumas following her mother’s death. Growing up in a strict household has made Isabel an austere, rigid, and lonely woman, who will try to keep everything under control, her emotions included, when his brother’s new girlfriend Eva stays over for a few weeks.
Yael van der Wouden’s incredible prose is powerful, evocative and sexy, and I was very happy to hear she won the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction: I am already looking forward to reading her next novel.
Review by Martina