The Lingering effect of WWII
- Book: The Safekeep
- Location: Netherlands
- Author: Yael van der Wouden
The author of The Safekeep, Yael van der Wouden, won the 2025 Women’s Prize For Fiction and it is well deserved for the quality of her writing – spare and loaded with tension and mystery. Set in 1961, when the effects of WWII linger, the story is mostly set in an old house in rural Netherlands occupied by an obsessive, repressed woman who has a tenuous grasp on managing her life. Enter a young woman fobbed off by the older woman’s brother. The tension between the two women increases as one seeks to maintain control of the house and the other undermines it, leading to an emotional explosion of sex and revelation of the home’s pre-War history and the activities of the Dutch during and after that period. (If you do not like vivid descriptions of lesbian sex this book may not be right for you.)
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