Book Review | Mysterious House Pays Witness to Awakenings
Beautifully written, and with a solid plot in place, it’s not surprising that this debut novel was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize
Isabel is her mother’s Mini Me. Cold, a strict disciplinarian, set in her ways — and she’s only a 27-year-old. While she adores her younger brother Hendrik, she makes it clear that she disapproves of his homosexuality, and refuses to engage with him when he talks about his partner.
Isabel lives in a country house that her family relocated to during the Second World War, when famine hit Amsterdam, and is its current guardian. It doesn’t belong to her though, and never will — the house will go to her older brother Louis, who may never marry because he’s an incorrigible womaniser.
Enter Eva, Louis’s latest girlfriend. Loud, tacky, a peroxide blonde with roots showing, and clearly not well off. She moves in with Louis in his boarding house in the city, and when Louis has to travel to the UK for a month or so, he begs Isabel to let Eva stay with her. Isabel flatly refuses, “It’s my house”, she says, but Louis’s mildly threatening rejoinder, “Is it, Isabel? Yours?”, shuts her up.
Living with Eva is a nightmare — they’re like chalk and cheese. To make matters worse, Eva absolutely refuses to stay in the guest bedroom. She appropriates Isabel’s mother’s bedroom — a shrine, as far as Isabel is concerned — and puts her own mother’s photo up there. She fraternises with the young maid whom Isabel treats with disdain, and encourages Johan, a family friend and neighbour, to court Isabel. She crosses all the lines, and treats the family home like it belongs to her.
Isabel’s first kiss ever, with Johan, doesn’t not move her. Her sexual awakening, however, happens soon after, with Eva being the catalyst, of course. Isabel is conflicted, but excited, and hungers for more. More electrifying things await her: she finds out who has actually been stealing little things like spoons and bowls (her mother’s precious possessions), she discovers the history of the house, and more.
As for Eva, well, there are things you enjoy about her, and things that may make you feel a little sick, but you understand her, and may have dared to do the same. No spoiler alerts here, but you know what the Nazis did, and how the populations of the countries they stormed into became complicit. While we’ve read many books on the subject, this story still shines with sexual awakening at its core.
Beautifully written, and with a solid plot in place, it’s not surprising that this debut novel was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. There’s one award that this book may never be shortlisted for, however: the Bad Sex in Fiction award. Steamy and sensual can also be sensitively portrayed, and this is Exhibit A.
The Safekeep
By Yael Van Der Wouden
Penguin
pp. 258; Rs 599