A very sensual book

Notes from: Yael van der Wouden's The Safekeep...

This is not necessarily a review—I just love analysing and unpacking quotes, sometimes even individual words within them. However, as a general rule, if I underline lots of quotes, it’s usually a highly rated book!

These are studies of quotes within certain novels—either unpacking larger themes or simply exploring how each quote makes me feel on its own. I like applying quotes to my life, using them to articulate feelings I’ve never known how to describe. So, welcome to Quotation Studies.

There’s no rhyme or reason here. Just thoughts sprawled out onto a page. It’s me enjoying language as a former literature student who misses the act of unpacking words.

This Week: The Safekeep, Yael van der Wouden

The Safekeep, based on the UK cover, was not what I was expecting in theme. The US cover is perhaps more telling with the two pears. The historical nature of the novel I was expecting like other novels set in the Netherland’s was only woven into the sensual relationship that fragranced the novel. I, nonetheless, was gripping the treadmill as I swiped each page on my phone.

A full review of the novel and my rating will be in my monthly reads, but for this quotation study I wanted to dive away from the philosophical quotes that I normally dwell on and to focus on the abundance of sensual language used and it’s potency.

I don’t have a quote for this but let me set the scene. This is a book set during a hot, slow summer. There is an electricity that runs throughout the pages and we know what happens when it get hot!

“Have I ever been a body before?”

Isabel (Isa) the protagonist of the novel asks near the end of the book as she gets closer and closer to Eva. And by close I mean lips on lips and lips underneath. The novel does not shy away from the sex scenes. But they are not crude they are realistic and sensual.

This is a sapphic novel and I think there are two points to be made from this question. Firstly that one may not truly know themself until they have embraced their sexuality or experienced a sensuality that fits them. Second, is the body created when it comes into being with another? Are we inevitably sexual beings that will never know our body until we have this connection?

“Have you just been waiting to happen?”

Likewise, Eva asks this to Isa a little before the above. Are we not our true selves until we meet someone to unlock the final part that is hidden within? Do we need someone else to actualise our full potential?

‘She kissed them, and kissed them, and pressed her face into as much skin as she could find. Papery and soft and weathered in places—elbows and knuckles. Skin. All of her skin.’

This line is so special. I adore when skin is described as paper. There is a poem called Tissue by Imitaz Dharker that plays on skin, paper, tissue and all these surfaces made of interconnected fibres. Something to be marked and written on. I think of this idea of often and I can envisage this here.

The juxtaposition of soft and weathered is also quaint — sorry that felt to literature student of me! The skin is marked but it also new and ever exciting and loved by the person planting kisses.

I guess you could also add cotton into this. The skin as a pillow. There is nothing more comforting than laying across your lovers stomach or chest — it’s the best pillow.

“Isabel touched her hand on passing: her smallest finger to Eva’s smallest finger. A touch, a hook, and gone.”

I am yet again a sucker for the small gestures, the intimate fleeting touches. Love is not this big grand gesture, it is those small mundane moments that cause the flicker in your heart. There is of course a bigger picture here, their forbidden love. But I think that makes this line all the more special.

“Her heart had raced then. Her heart raced now still”

There is not much to say here other than these two lines are beautiful, the rhythm that erupts into this overwhelming beating heart. It encapsulates the butterflies of a new and exciting love. My own heart raced while reading the book and it races analysing the wonderful language of this book.