No plot, all atmosphere...meet the 21st-century novel

Yael van der Wouden's hyped debut 'The Safekeep' has been compared to Patricia Highsmith and Sarah Waters. But the lack of narrative thrust is a problem, says Robert McCrum

- Robert McCrum

It’s an iron law of the book trade that when the publicity for a first novel by an unknown writer praises its presumed affinity with the work of established contemporary masters – the “awesome pathos of X”; or the “highly charged beauty of Y”; even “the wild intimacy of Z” – there’s usually big money at stake.

The Safekeep by the Dutch writer Yael van der Wouden, festooned with breathless hyperbole, and comparisons to the work of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan, is a case study of publishers’ ballyhoo. Indeed, in promoting.

The Safekeep, Penguin Viking actually declares, with rare bravado, that this debut novel was acquired in “a hotly-contested nineway auction”. (Translation: We forked out big time for this one). Nothing, in such boasts, could be better calculated to inspire an atavistic longing for the pleasures of solitary reading, unmediated by considerations of money or fame.

Enough about the hype. Actually to compare The Safekeep with Atonement et al is a surprising misstep for a world-class publisher. Yes, Van der Wouden transports her readers to an eerie country house in a remote, brooding landscape – and she does indeed subject a family of orphans to the tormented aftermath of the Second World War. But – it’s a big “but” – unlike McEwan and Waters, Van der Wouden displays no natural command of narrative, beyond a shadowy, vaguely sinister, backstory.