Yael van der Wouden's first novel, The Safekeep, explores the rural Dutch landscape in the years following World War II through the life of a lonely, sheltered woman reluctantly forging new bonds. In what is largely a closed-in, personal story with a solitary protagonist, van der Wouden also examines larger issues in the social context of Dutch postwar society.

The story is set in 1961, in a rural Dutch province that has largely recovered from war, on its surface. Isabel has spent her life tucked away in the house where her family relocated from Amsterdam during the war. An uncle found the place for them, and 11-year-old Isabel took up residence with her mother, younger brother Hendrik and elder brother Louis. Eventually, their mother died and the brothers moved away, but Isabel stayed, believing there was nowhere else for her. She keeps the house meticulously, polishing dishes and micromanaging a series of beleaguered maids. "She belonged to the house in the sense that she had nothing else, no other life than the house, but the house, by itself, did not belong to her." She lunches occasionally with Hendrik, less often with Louis. In her lonely, strictly regimented life, the house is Isabel's constant, the thing she can control, her greatest comfort.

The Safekeep opens in her garden. While digging out late-season vegetables, Isabel finds a shard of broken ceramic, "Blue flowers along the inch of a rim, the suggestion of a hare's leg where the crockery had broken. It had once been a plate, which was part of a set--her mother's favourite.... There was no explanation for the broken piece, for where it had come from and why it had been buried. None of Mother's plates had ever gone missing." This beginning offers an early clue that Isabel's understanding of the house and its contents, of her own personal history, may be flawed.

Further disruptions follow. Hendrik, a steadfast supporter of his solitary sister, nevertheless lives a life she hasn't come to terms with. He lives with a man; this makes Isabel uncomfortable. Worse, Louis brings yet another young woman, Eva, to a dinner with his siblings. Eva sets Isabel on edge for reasons Isabel does not understand. Additionally, any serious liaison for Louis implies a threat to Isabel, who is permitted to stay in the house only until Louis (its intended inheritor) settles down to start a family. Worse yet, at Louis's insistence, Eva comes to stay at the house with Isabel while he is on a trip: Isabel is horrified to be made to share her space with a woman she despises.

The tension in the house rises to a nearly unbearable pitch. Isabel habitually suspects her maids of stealing, and now suspects Eva, whose own history is murky, as well. Isabel obsessively inventories china dishes, silverware, and items of décor, counting spoons and watching Eva's every move. She cleans and displays and relocates the mysterious shard of plate from the garden, imbuing this small object with outsized power. Eva's presence continues to feel inexplicable. Louis's return from abroad, to collect Isabel's unwanted houseguest, is delayed. Tensions continue to build.

Van der Wouden excels in surprises, including changes in tone. The Safekeep remains, almost in its entirety, nearly claustrophobic in its focus on Isabel's commitment to her family home. "Bound to the house, [Hendrik] said. As if it was a tether and not a shelter. And not her own love, too." But this tightly bound, insular story of one woman's struggle finally zooms out, with near dizzying quickness, to engage with larger questions. An old friend of Isabel's mother is preoccupied with a dish that was given to her "to keep" before the war, by a neighbor who now wants it back. This friend believes it is hers now; the neighbor disagrees. "What does it matter, gifting, keeping? She gave it to me. It was a terrible time. She was gone for years." As its title hints, van der Wouden's novel will puzzle over various meanings of safekeeping. Likewise, the sparsely populated story is punctuated by passages of erotic writing that surprise as much by their loveliness as by their departure from the book's otherwise lonely atmosphere. Not only the story of one family's struggle or Isabel's quiet pain, The Safekeep addresses themes of yearning, possession, the difficulties of Dutch recovery from World War II and of same-sex couples' experiences in a society still regaining its feet.

In the end, like a country recovering from a trauma, Isabel must step outside her space of comfort and familiarity in order to learn and grow. "Isabel tested one [of the frozen canals] with her foot, and found it solid, and then stood on it in wonder: a miracle, she thought, to stand so solidly on what could also engulf you." Van der Wouden communicates and implies much with a minimalist style that is often quietly, shockingly, beautiful. "The shadows lifted as though they'd only been glimpsed under the hem of a skirt--the lift on an arm, secrets of the body that only unfolded for the night." The Safekeep is a slow-burning, deceptively austere novel, whose subtle, crafty questions and lovely, lyric style will follow the reader long after its conclusion. --Julia Kastner

Yael van der Wouden (photo: Roosmarijn Broersen)

Yael van der Wouden was born in Tel Aviv and currently lectures in creative writing and comparative literature in the Netherlands. Her debut novel, The Safekeep, a quiet consideration of the aftermath of World War II in the Dutch countryside, will be published by Avid Reader Press in May 2024.

What about this story needed telling?

The most common story you hear from Dutch Jewish people of my generation is they grew up not knowing they were Jewish. Around age 20, 25, when their grandparents got older, the story came out: they were Jewish and either had to hide during the war or decide to convert entirely. They were so traumatized by being recognized as Jewish that they just wiped it clean. I have a lot of friends around me who around that age started digging into that history. I think I leaned heavily into that.

My mother is Israeli but her heritage is Bulgarian and Romanian, and my dad is not Jewish. He's Dutch. My Jewishness is not related to my Dutchness. I grew up within Jewish culture, so a lot of those friends came to me. I was always embarrassed to tell them I can give you the songs, the rituals, but the real, true, in-depth knowledge, I do not have. But I guess when you have nothing, then anything resembling a cultural narrative is a lot.

I spent a lot of my 20s in a turmoil of frustration and anger around how nonexistent Jewish heritage is in the Netherlands. It's been cannibalized: taken apart and consumed by mainstream Dutch culture. There's a lot of Yiddish in Dutch, which is very confusing when no one is Jewish but everyone says words you understand. How did this word get here? Mazzel, or punim which means face, or lef which means bravery, heart. There were traces. Empty synagogues, houses with David stars on them but no one lives there anymore... it's as if--no, it is that an entire community of people has just disappeared overnight. And no one ever asked where they went.

All that's left of them is the traces of language, and locale. The places where they lived. When I started to notice what was around me and what was not present, I (in very 20s fashion) became very frustrated and angry. It's a conversation that I've been having with myself and with people around me ever since. What needs to happen with that history? What does an apology mean? Who is the apology for? Is it for the person who apologizes, or is it for the person on the other end, who receives it? I don't want an apology. What kind of acknowledgement do I want? That's the question that's been on my mind for a long time.

What's changed in the Netherlands?

If one person is born into responsibility, and the other person is born into misery, how do you marry the two? In that conversation I was having with myself, it's more than acknowledgment. "Yes, this happened. Yes, I'm sorry." What I wanted for these characters is for them to find the next step, which I believe is desire. Desire to have the other person around. Desire to have the other person stay. The other side of the coin.

The Netherlands had one of the highest percentages of deported people during World War II. The narrative is that the Dutch had a great resistance, they helped people hide, but actually a lot of people asked for money to hide people. Only people who had wealth could hide. The Dutch are very big on bureaucracy. So when the German officers and officials asked, where are the Jews and where do they live, the Dutch just said, here they are. That's why it happened so quickly, across the board. They were very efficient. For me the flip side of not caring that someone is going to be taken away is desiring the person to come back, desiring them to stay. How do we take ignorance and prejudice and flip it into desire? I don't think that tolerance and acceptance is the solution. I think desire is the solution. I wanted to take Isabel and crack her open and see what would happen if that small life, that small way of thinking, were filled up with desire.

The conversation about Jewish life in the modern-day Netherlands is either about the war, or Israel and Palestine. When the Dutch talk about Jews they talk about those who have died or those who are not there. It's never about the present, the people who live here and how we are a part of society. It feels invisible--and at the same time, I don't want my visibility to be connected to death. I want it to be about Passover or Rosh Hashanah, or anything else. When you talk about somebody only in the context of them not being there, you're emphasizing that they don't belong in your midst. And that goes back to the idea of desire. Maybe it's a childish thing. I just want to be desired.

Your book includes some lovely erotic writing.

For me, erotica is about the knife's edge of voyeurism and participation. As a reader, you want to feel like you are present, but if you are too present then I think the text tries to envelope you, tries to comfort, and I think good erotic writing makes you a little uncomfortable.

Zoom in, zoom out. Zoom in on a body part--ideally you don't zoom in on a body part that is sexual. An elbow, the tip of the nose. Something unexpected. Then you contrast that with something that is very sexual or very obvious. I think that's how you create that erotic tension.

People sometimes enter into it with their own discomfort, and rather than treat it earnestly, they make it either as weird as possible or as disgusting as possible. Every body part, all the filthy juices. They will not create something attractive, but lean into an element of disgust. I think you need a little bit of disgust, but it should be a palette. It needs to be a good goulash: the sour, the sweet, the savory. You have to be completely earnest about it or it will not work. You need to fully mean to write something personal and intimate.

What do you feel makes a fascinating protagonist?

Everybody will have a different answer. For me the answer is quite similar to the question of what makes good erotica. I think the answer is contrast. Conflict. My favorite line about protagonists is from E.M. Forster. When he talks about Maurice, he says he wanted to write the most normal, run-of-the-mill guy, and then give him something that upends his worldview. For Maurice, it is that he falls in love with a man. The entire mechanism of him has to change in order to accommodate this thing within him that doesn't fit within the norm. I think that's the most fascinating character. Somebody who has their idea of who they are, and then you throw something in the middle that topples that Jenga tower. Those are the most interesting moments in our lives, when you have this idea of who you are and something or somebody comes along and you realize, oh, no--I had no idea who I was. --Julia Kastner