August Text Book Club : The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
The Safekeep is a tender story of desire and obsession set in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024 and won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025.
The book club will be held upstairs in our reading rooms and are suitable for ages 18+ years.
About the book -
An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement. It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother's country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep - as a guest, there to stay for the season…In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate need for control reaches boiling point.
What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known.
The Safekeep is a tender story of desire and obsession set in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024 and won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025.
The book club will be held upstairs in our reading rooms and are suitable for ages 18+ years.
About the book -
An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement. It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother's country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep - as a guest, there to stay for the season…In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate need for control reaches boiling point.
What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known.
The Safekeep is a tender story of desire and obsession set in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024 and won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025.
The book club will be held upstairs in our reading rooms and are suitable for ages 18+ years.
About the book -
An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement. It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother's country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep - as a guest, there to stay for the season…In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate need for control reaches boiling point.
What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known.