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 reckoning with Dutch collaboration in the Holocaust, 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 historical reckoning that gives the book its weight arrives late, through a discovered diary, and it lands as a tidy mechanism rather than an earned turn. The clues to the twist are visible early enough that the reveal mostly confirms what you guessed.
Best of Last 10 Years · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
