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A review by khopeisz
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
2.0
3rd time attempting a review for this. Hopefully I’ll let it stick!
The positives: this was a compulsive read. I was completely absorbed by the sense of mystery in the air. I also commend the author for endearing me to an unlikeable main character. Not every author can do that.
The negatives: once I reached the final 3rd of this book and realized where it was going, I was completely flabbergasted. I can’t really remove this book from its historical (and also present?) context. Nor is this book asking me to decontextualize it from reality. So my issue is this: HOW does an author decide to write a story in which an oppressed person essentially falls in love with someone who represents their oppression? Ask me if I am falling in love with the person whose family decided to force me out of my own home, and I’m telling you my answer is hell no. No way in hell. I would hate those people until my last breath. I forgot everyone’s names, I’m writing this several weeks after reading this book, but why did we write this love story between these two ladies? I’m aware it conflicts girl number 2, that’s not my main problem. My problem is why did we write a love story between them at all? Like a true, non-manipulative (which is often the case of power imbalanced romances) love story? As a person who has experienced systemic oppression, I was really confused by this. How do you ask someone who was quite recently and traumatically colonized to fall in love with the person who colonized them? I want to know. [im really in the minority on this critique, I get it. But I couldn’t read this book in a vacuum!]
And back to the confliction bit: I do not get a real sense of girl number 2’s interiority. We get a lot and I mean A LOT of starts and stops of conversations. She is conflicted about this romance, I get it—but to convince me that this is in fact a romance to her I needed much more than what I was given. Little ellipses and incomplete sentences don’t cut it. And her diary entries were not helpful for me either. They explained her backstory, but I needed more wrestling with this romance. This is essentially a philosophical dilemma! if it were me, i would have been wrestling with this at length! Like I would have much rather appreciated an exploration of girl number 2, her being bisexual during that time period while also wrestling with systemic oppression. You know who represented this well? Emma Donoghue in Learned By Heart. You know what happens when you are oppressed in more ways than one and fall in love with someone who represents your oppression? You probably go crazy 😭 so anyway, I needed to believe that this character is in love with her colonizer and this wasn’t just some indulgence for the author. There was more responsibility to this in my opinion, and I was just confused by the author’s intentions.
The positives: this was a compulsive read. I was completely absorbed by the sense of mystery in the air. I also commend the author for endearing me to an unlikeable main character. Not every author can do that.
The negatives: once I reached the final 3rd of this book and realized where it was going, I was completely flabbergasted. I can’t really remove this book from its historical (and also present?) context. Nor is this book asking me to decontextualize it from reality. So my issue is this: HOW does an author decide to write a story in which an oppressed person essentially falls in love with someone who represents their oppression? Ask me if I am falling in love with the person whose family decided to force me out of my own home, and I’m telling you my answer is hell no. No way in hell. I would hate those people until my last breath. I forgot everyone’s names, I’m writing this several weeks after reading this book, but why did we write this love story between these two ladies? I’m aware it conflicts girl number 2, that’s not my main problem. My problem is why did we write a love story between them at all? Like a true, non-manipulative (which is often the case of power imbalanced romances) love story? As a person who has experienced systemic oppression, I was really confused by this. How do you ask someone who was quite recently and traumatically colonized to fall in love with the person who colonized them? I want to know. [im really in the minority on this critique, I get it. But I couldn’t read this book in a vacuum!]
And back to the confliction bit: I do not get a real sense of girl number 2’s interiority. We get a lot and I mean A LOT of starts and stops of conversations. She is conflicted about this romance, I get it—but to convince me that this is in fact a romance to her I needed much more than what I was given. Little ellipses and incomplete sentences don’t cut it. And her diary entries were not helpful for me either. They explained her backstory, but I needed more wrestling with this romance. This is essentially a philosophical dilemma! if it were me, i would have been wrestling with this at length! Like I would have much rather appreciated an exploration of girl number 2, her being bisexual during that time period while also wrestling with systemic oppression. You know who represented this well? Emma Donoghue in Learned By Heart. You know what happens when you are oppressed in more ways than one and fall in love with someone who represents your oppression? You probably go crazy 😭 so anyway, I needed to believe that this character is in love with her colonizer and this wasn’t just some indulgence for the author. There was more responsibility to this in my opinion, and I was just confused by the author’s intentions.