I am sure you will have seen ‘The Safekeep’ around. It won the 2025’s Women’s prize, and I can totally see why. Any book where the title can have multiple meanings in relation to the text is a winner to me – and there are really a number of ways you can interpret the title of this book, as well as the original meaning of the title. Which I am not sure I can tell you, as I think that could well be a little bit of a spoiler for the final part of the book.
This is a beautifully written, well-constructed story. We meet Isa, who is living like a recluse in her childhood home that her family moved into during the war. She has very little contact with the outside world, other than with her two brothers and her regular maid; she is suspicious of the outside world, and feels she needs to keep the home safe. Until the arrival of her brother Louis’ latest girlfriend, who moves in with Isa and turns her life upside down.
Their relationship is explored in detail, as Isa learns more about herself than she has for most of her life. And it also forces her to reflect on her past. But once her houseguest, Eva, leaves, Isa finds out the truth about her famly home – and this forces her to reflect on her family and country’s history.
The safekeep means so much in this book, or as I read it, it does. And I am not sure I should explore them in this blog post, as I fear it may take away from the reading experience for anyone who would like to read it, but it definitely forced me to reflect a little more about this book and not just take it at face value.
This is a good book, and I can see why it is a prize winner. And the final part of the story that brings it all together is excellent, but it is a complex book, and I am not sure how you would categorise it, as it seems to cross a number of genres. I have seen it described as a thriller, but I am not sure I would say that; it has also been seen as historical fiction (with its 1960s setting), but I am not sure I would even call it that. I think it is an excellent piece of literary fiction that needs to be read for anyone to be able to form any kind of judgement about it, because I suspect it is a very different reading experience for each reader.