THE SAFEKEEP wins the Women’s Prize for Fiction
Yael van der Wouden's debut novel was a finalist for the Booker Prize last year.
Today the Women’s Prize for Fiction, arguably the second most prestigious literary award in the UK after the Booker Prize, was awarded to Yael van der Wouden for her 2024 debut, The Safekeep. I read it last fall and found it riveting from start to finish. It’s as good a debut novel as I’ve ever read.
Author Kit de Waal, who chaired the fiction judging panel, called the book “a masterful blend of history, suspense and historical authenticity” that reveals “an aspect of war and the Holocaust that has been, until now, mostly unexplored in fiction.” The prize comes with a GBP 30,000 purse (US $41,000). Last year, van der Wouden became the first Dutch author to be a finalist for the Booker Prize.
The other finalists were Good Girl by Aria Aber, All Fours by Miranda July, The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji, Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout, and Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis.
Van der Wouden was born in Tel Aviv to an Israeli mother and Dutch father. She has described herself as a “Dutch-Israeli mixed-bag-diaspora child.” She lives in the Netherlands where she teaches creative writing and comparative literature.
Here’s my review from late last year. It’s shorter than usual because I didn’t want to give anything away (but probably did anyway).
Three books stood above all the others I read this year for the brilliance of their conception and execution. Along with James and The Axeman’s Carnival, Yael van der Wouden’s debut novel, The Safekeep, made the biggest impression on me. It’s one of those books where you go around saying, “You have to read this book!”
Set in the Netherlands in 1961, it’s the story of Isabel, who lives alone in her family’s country house (now owned by her brother Louis). Is she an introvert or a bitter misanthrope? When Louis brings his new girlfriend, Eva, to dinner, Isabel takes an instant dislike to her. The plot is set in motion a few weeks later when Louis asks if Eva can stay with Isabel while he’s out of the country on business for a month.
The tension is palpable. Isabel resents the extroverted Eva’s disruption of her quiet routine and mistrusts her. Eva tries her best to befriend Isabel, but nothing works. Objects go missing; is Eva stealing from the house? Why is Isabel so obsessed with the house and its belongings? Why is Eva so vague about her background? You can feel the turn of the screw, page by page. They are worthy foes, each full of steely determination but with different approaches to their ongoing battle of wills. Eventually, Isabel’s repulsion turns to attraction. Is it self-discovery or is she revealing her long-hidden true self? Slowly all is revealed, with the coup de grace saved for Eva’s narrative at the end.
Yael van der Wouden’s depiction of the ensuing emotional complications, set in a time and place where the reverberations of WWII and the Holocaust were still being felt fifteen years later, is riveting. The Safekeep is nearly flawless in structure, characterization, mood, and the quality of its prose. It’s as good a debut as I’ve read in a long time.