The Safekeep: A Novel

"It’s set in Holland in the 1960s, and it’s about this pretty unhappy woman who lives in a house. Her brother’s girlfriend comes to stay with her. It’s really about the relationship between the two women, and also about how history rises up unbidden and knocks your life aside. It’s very well written. I think it will be a classic. It’s short as well! The subject matter is unusual, and yet we think we know it. 80% of the book takes place in the rooms of a house. It’s not a big adventure, it’s a mini, interior adventure that this woman goes on, and the horrible realisation that she makes about who she is and the things that have been done in her name."

"Amongst many other joys, a page-turner! We’re in the Dutch province of Overijssel, fifteen years after the end of the Second World War . The reader will learn many uncomfortable truths. I won’t spoil the plot with revelation except to say the obvious: that war isn’t over when hostilities cease. Readers can expect to be shocked, disturbed, conflicted, haunted even, by this story. They’ll also find the book stays with them after they’ve put it down. But if it’s a story of past hates, it’s much more a love story, written with all the power of love that’s unexpected, in many ways unwelcome, yet can’t be denied. Yes and no. Always bearing in mind our criteria – originality, innovation, durability, ambition, quality of writing – we have read some marvellous books. We’ve also read books whose writers paste twenty-first century mindsets, morality and preoccupations onto people living in times that had completely different mindsets, morality and preoccupations. Such books may be novels but they aren’t historical novels and it’s a bit depressing when they’re labelled as such. Historical novels should respect the past. If you don’t respect the past, this genre is not for you. The winner of the 2025 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction will be announced on Thursday 12 June at the Borders Book Festival ."

"There’s a strangeness to this novel. It’s talking about the Holocaust, and the Holocaust in relation to the ownership of a house. There are two women: Isabel, who lives in the house, and Eva, a guest who comes to stay for a season. Eva is Isabel’s brother’s girlfriend. Isabel realises that there’s something not quite right, an ulterior motive. Then, weirdly, they become closer and closer. It questions what it means to have claim on a home. The house represents so much to each of them. But they are also confronted by each other’s behaviour. For me, it really is a strange analogy with what has been going on in Gaza, yet it’s from the perspective of the Holocaust. It is interesting as a book, and I thought it was clever, beautifully written, and totally believable. I liked that it doesn’t become didactic or overly symbolic. It’s very much about human interaction, human feelings, and how they arise from what we are dealt with."