The Safekeep. Yael van der Wouten.ISBN 9781668034347. 272 pages
In 1997 the Dutch government set up the Kordes Committee, to investigate the theft and recovery of property of war victims. Twenty five years later, in 2022, the Dutch Cabinet decided to make €181.5 million available to the Jewish community “in order to finally do justice to the criticism of the treatment of the persecution of victims, the restoration of their rights and the consequences that this has had for their continued existence”.
This is a piece of history that I was unaware of and which this 2024 Booker Prize long list nominee has illuminated.
It’s a debut novel and Yael Van der Wouden addresses the issue of property theft in a cleverly oblique way. The reader is fed small nuggets of information, and not blasted with an overt reckoning of events. There are multiple digressions and diversions which obscure the centrality of the message- and the book’s title does not give the game away. It’s also a book about multiple mental scars (especially Isabel Den Brave, the main protagonist), and the study of a young woman repressed and emotionally withdrawn, brittle and perennially irritable, is compelling at times. When a close, and unexpected, and sudden personal relationship develops it is manifest in a torrent of hitherto unarticulated desire and longing.
Structured in three parts, the third section in particular left me disoriented, and challenged. It was very effective and all the more impactful when I was able to reset and align with the earlier parts of the novel. Personally I didn’t catch on to what was going on beneath the surface of the various love affairs. Isabel’s brothers Louis and Hendrik have their own unresolved childhood associations, and coupled with Isabel’s awakening this blindsided me regarding the bigger picture and motivations going on simultaneously.
I bought the American edition of the book and this is a novel with radically different book covers in Europe and the States. I like the American version, and the image of two pears on the cover is more than a pretty, and enticing, image to encourage buyers.
Catholic St, Augustine (of Hippo, 354-430 AD) preacher and theologian, famously describes once stealing from a pear tree as a teenager. Augustine admits to being gratuitously wanton: “It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing.”
One of Louis’s girlfriends (he is a serial loverboy), Eva de Haas, brings some pears to the house, which Isabel devours, while wanting more.
A book which I enjoyed immensely on reflection, once I had reached the end and finally understood what the writer was setting out to convey. The reading experience getting there was not so engaging, but I suspect a second read will be an altogether more fulfilling journey to the (slightly disappointing) ending.