Latest news with #ElizabethStrout
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Where to start with: Elizabeth Strout
American author Elizabeth Strout has captured millions of readers' imaginations with her small-town stories of ordinary people with rich inner lives. Her novels – often set in Maine, where she grew up – have won her a Pulitzer and got her shortlisted for the Booker and, this year, the Women's prize for fiction. Joe Stone gives us a tour of her interconnected oeuvre. Strout's first novel, Amy and Isabelle, introduces many of the themes which characterise her work. It's a close study of small-town life, exploring class, shame and the essential unknowability of others. When we meet anxious secretary Isabelle and her teenage daughter Amy, the claustrophobic domesticity in which they've existed has recently been shattered. Amy has been seduced by her high-school maths teacher, which threatens to dismantle Isabelle's dearly held propriety and the decades-old secret it conceals. At once intricate and expansive, the novel introduced Strout's rare gift for uncovering the profound in the quotidian. While her first two novels were critically lauded, it was Olive Kitteridge – which won the Pulitzer prize and was adapted into an Emmy-winning HBO miniseries starring Frances McDormand – that established Strout as a singular talent. A novel told in 13 short stories, it centres on Olive, one of fiction's most endearing and infuriating creations. Prone to displaying extraordinary compassion to strangers, but incapable of thanking her gentle husband for a bunch of ugly flowers, Olive charges through the world at once trenchant in her own righteousness and bewildered by her inability to understand the motives of others (most significantly, her son Christopher, who she loves with a fierceness that drives him away). The resulting missed human connections have heartbreaking, funny and thrilling consequences – memorably when Olive responds to a slight from her daughter-in-law by defacing one of her sweaters with magic marker and stealing a shoe in the hope that she'll believe she's losing her mind (somehow, we cheer her on). At one point, studying an old photo of her husband, Olive thinks 'You will marry a beast, and love her.' Is she a beast? She certainly can be. But we love her. All of Strout's novels are fan favourites, but My Name is Lucy Barton marks the first in her Amgash series (named after the fictional Illinois town where much of the action takes place), and introduces characters who feature in four subsequent novels. The book is presented as the memoir of its titular character, reflecting on a period years earlier, when her taciturn mother visited her during a lengthy hospital stay. Their oblique conversations, and Lucy's dreamlike recollections, paint a dismal portrait of her impoverished, isolated childhood. Over five days, the pair share anecdotes about figures from their past, but it is the gaps in their conversation that prove most revealing – they don't discuss Lucy's father's brutalities or her mother's inability to tell her she loves her. It is within these vibrating silences that Lucy attempts to untangle a very imperfect kind of love, and reconcile her current life with the beginnings she transcended. Strout's books are not exactly thrillers. Readers come to her for her authorial voice and unsentimental insights into the human condition, and her work is more concerned with theme than plot. Still, there are inciting incidents: affairs, suicides and the occasional armed robbery. Tell Me Everything incorporates a murder mystery – attorney Bob Burgess (who first appeared in Strout's fourth book, The Burgess Boys, and who we are told has a big heart 'but did not know that about himself') is called to defend a reclusive man accused of murdering his mother. It also features a will-they-won't-they romance between Bob and Lucy Barton. This intertextual element is another joy of Strout's work. Many of her books contain the same characters, all living in Crosby, Maine, and crossing paths in unexpected ways, making her work the literary equivalent of The Marvel Cinematic Universe. In Tell Me Everything, characters from all of Strout's previous novels coalesce – most excitingly when Lucy is summoned for an audience with Olive Kitteridge (Olive's initial verdict? 'Meek-and-mousy'). After this shaky start, the pair continue meeting to discuss the 'unrecorded lives' of people they have known, and grapple with one of the central questions of Strout's work: what does anyone's life mean? It's perhaps strange to describe Anything Is Possible as cheerful; one review billed it as 'a requiem for small town pain'. This 2017 novel, told in interlinked stories, is a companion to 2016's My Name Is Lucy Barton, which was written at the same time. It features a wellspring of dark themes; chiefly, the legacies of childhood trauma. One story, Sister, sees Lucy Barton reunited with her estranged siblings, and reveals the true horror of their upbringing, lightly sketched in the earlier book. Elsewhere, the Nicely sisters are still metabolising the shame of their mother's affair, and her subsequent defection from the family, decades earlier. For Linda, this sense of abandonment has curdled into something sinister, and she colludes with her husband to spy on female house guests. It's perhaps Strout's most macabre story. Meanwhile, Linda's sister, nicknamed 'Fatty Patty' by the students she acts as a guidance counsellor for, is rendered leaden by the weight of her unexpressed love. As for the cheer? This gloom is punctuated by shimmers of grace, and reprieve arrives in unlikely forms. Patty finds her own struggles both dignified and understood by the memoir Lucy has written, and her quiet communion with traumatised Vietnam vet Charlie hints at a more substantive redemption. 'Love was the skin that protected you from the world,' she decides. Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout is out now in paperback (Viking). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Where to start with: Elizabeth Strout
American author Elizabeth Strout has captured millions of readers' imaginations with her small-town stories of ordinary people with rich inner lives. Her novels – often set in Maine, where she grew up – have won her a Pulitzer and got her shortlisted for the Booker and, this year, the Women's prize for fiction. Joe Stone gives us a tour of her interconnected oeuvre. Strout's first novel, Amy and Isabelle, introduces many of the themes which characterise her work. It's a close study of small-town life, exploring class, shame and the essential unknowability of others. When we meet anxious secretary Isabelle and her teenage daughter Amy, the claustrophobic domesticity in which they've existed has recently been shattered. Amy has been seduced by her high-school maths teacher, which threatens to dismantle Isabelle's dearly held propriety and the decades-old secret it conceals. At once intricate and expansive, the novel introduced Strout's rare gift for uncovering the profound in the quotidian. While her first two novels were critically lauded, it was Olive Kitteridge – which won the Pulitzer prize and was adapted into an Emmy-winning HBO miniseries starring Frances McDormand – that established Strout as a singular talent. A novel told in 13 short stories, it centres on Olive, one of fiction's most endearing and infuriating creations. Prone to displaying extraordinary compassion to strangers, but incapable of thanking her gentle husband for a bunch of ugly flowers, Olive charges through the world at once trenchant in her own righteousness and bewildered by her inability to understand the motives of others (most significantly, her son Christopher, who she loves with a fierceness that drives him away). The resulting missed human connections have heartbreaking, funny and thrilling consequences – memorably when Olive responds to a slight from her daughter-in-law by defacing one of her sweaters with magic marker and stealing a shoe in the hope that she'll believe she's losing her mind (somehow, we cheer her on). At one point, studying an old photo of her husband, Olive thinks 'You will marry a beast, and love her.' Is she a beast? She certainly can be. But we love her. All of Strout's novels are fan favourites, but My Name is Lucy Barton marks the first in her Amgash series (named after the fictional Illinois town where much of the action takes place), and introduces characters who feature in four subsequent novels. The book is presented as the memoir of its titular character, reflecting on a period years earlier, when her taciturn mother visited her during a lengthy hospital stay. Their oblique conversations, and Lucy's dreamlike recollections, paint a dismal portrait of her impoverished, isolated childhood. Over five days, the pair share anecdotes about figures from their past, but it is the gaps in their conversation that prove most revealing – they don't discuss Lucy's father's brutalities or her mother's inability to tell her she loves her. It is within these vibrating silences that Lucy attempts to untangle a very imperfect kind of love, and reconcile her current life with the beginnings she transcended. Strout's books are not exactly thrillers. Readers come to her for her authorial voice and unsentimental insights into the human condition, and her work is more concerned with theme than plot. Still, there are inciting incidents: affairs, suicides and the occasional armed robbery. Tell Me Everything incorporates a murder mystery – attorney Bob Burgess (who first appeared in Strout's fourth book, The Burgess Boys, and who we are told has a big heart 'but did not know that about himself') is called to defend a reclusive man accused of murdering his mother. It also features a will-they-won't-they romance between Bob and Lucy Barton. This intertextual element is another joy of Strout's work. Many of her books contain the same characters, all living in Crosby, Maine, and crossing paths in unexpected ways, making her work the literary equivalent of The Marvel Cinematic Universe. In Tell Me Everything, characters from all of Strout's previous novels coalesce – most excitingly when Lucy is summoned for an audience with Olive Kitteridge (Olive's initial verdict? 'Meek-and-mousy'). After this shaky start, the pair continue meeting to discuss the 'unrecorded lives' of people they have known, and grapple with one of the central questions of Strout's work: what does anyone's life mean? It's perhaps strange to describe Anything Is Possible as cheerful; one review billed it as 'a requiem for small town pain'. This 2017 novel, told in interlinked stories, is a companion to 2016's My Name Is Lucy Barton, which was written at the same time. It features a wellspring of dark themes; chiefly, the legacies of childhood trauma. One story, Sister, sees Lucy Barton reunited with her estranged siblings, and reveals the true horror of their upbringing, lightly sketched in the earlier book. Elsewhere, the Nicely sisters are still metabolising the shame of their mother's affair, and her subsequent defection from the family, decades earlier. For Linda, this sense of abandonment has curdled into something sinister, and she colludes with her husband to spy on female house guests. It's perhaps Strout's most macabre story. Meanwhile, Linda's sister, nicknamed 'Fatty Patty' by the students she acts as a guidance counsellor for, is rendered leaden by the weight of her unexpressed love. As for the cheer? This gloom is punctuated by shimmers of grace, and reprieve arrives in unlikely forms. Patty finds her own struggles both dignified and understood by the memoir Lucy has written, and her quiet communion with traumatised Vietnam vet Charlie hints at a more substantive redemption. 'Love was the skin that protected you from the world,' she decides. Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout is out now in paperback (Viking). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Korea Herald
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Summer reads: What we are reading at The Korea Herald
Here are some summer reading recommendations from The Korea Herald. Kim Hoo-ran Culture desk editor "Tell Me Everything" by Elizabeth Strout Many of the main characters in Elizabeth Strout's previous novels converge in "Tell Me Everything,' the Pulitzer-winning writer's latest book. While the book starts with a declaration that this is the story of Bob Burgess, a lawyer inhabiting many of Strout's works, 'Tell Me Everything' takes its time, meandering through seemingly disparate episodes and memories before those little 'diversions' all come together to tell a shocking story. The narrator observes the characters closely from a distance with cool detachment. There is a no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point, terse tone to the novel that may have something to do with Maine, the setting of this and many other Strout novels. All of Strout's 10 books feature main characters who reappear in successive works, either independently or together, interacting at some level. A summer vacation might be an opportune time to read the author's other novels, all a study in relationships. Lee Sun-young Content desk editor "The Hole" by Pyun Hye-young 'The Hole' follows Ogi, a once-successful professor whose life is shattered by a car accident that kills his wife and leaves him almost completely paralyzed. With only his eyes to make sense of the world, he is at the mercy of his increasingly sinister mother-in-law. The novel builds an eerie, claustrophobic atmosphere, leaving much unsaid, which is exactly what makes it so unsettling. Now is an especially good time to read this book, as director Kim Jee-woon, known for his masterful work in 'I Saw the Devil,' 'The Age of Shadows,' and 'A Tale of Two Sisters' is currently developing a film adaptation in collaboration with a Hollywood production team. Park Ga-young Culture desk reporter "The Longest Night" by Luly This book by Luly, the winner of the 21st Munhakdongne Children's Literature Award, is written for children but resonates with a much wider audience, making it a perfect choice for the entire family. While children will find the story cute and captivating, adults may find themselves moved to tears by its tender portrayal of love and the bond between unlikely friends. The book follows Noden, the last white boulder rhinoceros, and a young penguin hatched from an abandoned egg, as they embark on a poignant journey across the desert in search of the sea, facing countless challenges. With its engaging narrative and warm illustrations, it is also an excellent resource for Korean learners looking for a book that is both accessible and rich in storytelling. An English edition is currently in preparation. Shin Ji-hye Content desk reporter "Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI" by Yuval Noah Harari Bestselling historian Yuval Noah Harari takes us on a fast-paced journey through the history of how humans share and spread information. Harari's main point? Information is not just about truth — it's about connection. For thousands of years, humans have bonded over stories and these shared beliefs helped build tribes, religions, nations and empires. Whoever controlled the flow of information usually held the power. Now, it is not just humans telling the stories. AI is starting to decide what we read, watch and believe — and that could change everything. The real danger, Harari says, is not just that robots might take our jobs or go rogue. It is that we might lose our ability to shape our own stories — and with it, our sense of meaning and freedom. Kim Jae-heun Culture desk reporter "Media Technology, Emerging K-pop" by Lee Jong-im The COVID-19 pandemic changed how we connect, and this book dissects the role media and pop culture played in bridging isolation. From K-pop's explosive global presence to the rise of fan-targeted digital platforms, the book explores how intimacy between singers and fans has increasingly become a commodity. With sharp insight, the author traces how technology, once a tool for emotional connection, now drives hyper-commercialized fandom culture. A compelling read for those curious about the evolving dynamics of pop culture, technology and emotion in a post-pandemic world. Hong Yoo Culture desk reporter "Educated" by Tara Westover "Educated" is a powerful memoir by Tara Westover, who was born to survivalist parents in rural Idaho and grew up isolated from mainstream society. Denied formal education for much of her childhood, Westover taught herself enough to be admitted to Brigham Young University, eventually earning a doctorate from Cambridge. Her story is one of resilience, transformation, and the complex ties of family and identity. Told with raw honesty and poetic insight, the memoir challenges ideas of truth, learning and self-invention. With ongoing conversations around misinformation, ideological divides and the value of education, "Educated" remains as urgent and relevant as ever. Westover's journey reminds us of the power of learning not just to inform, but to liberate. Park Yuna Culture desk reporter 'Recipe for Daughter' by Gong Ji-young Korean novelist Gong Ji-young tells her daughter how she gets by in life by sharing 27 recipes woven with her own stories. Her recipes are never difficult to follow — such as bulgogi rice bowl, aglio e olio pasta, apple pie, spinach salad, tenderloin steak and bean sprout soup to cure a hangover. Whenever I need comforting, I open this book and randomly choose a recipe I am drawn to. Let's say it's an apple pie — prepare thinly sliced apples and spread evenly in a gratin dish. Sprinkle over ground cinnamon and crumble mixture by combining flour, butter and sugar. Bake in a preheated oven at 220 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes. 'As you gently blow on a hot bite of apple pie and take your first sip of warm tea, you will find yourself thinking — Oh! something good is going to happen to me!' the author writes to her daughter. Park Jun-hee Culture desk reporter "The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter — And How to Make the Most of Them Now" by Meg Jay My transition from being a teenager to my 20s was a big leap — from a student who sat in the very first row of the classroom to someone diving into self-discovery, exploring various career paths, trying to build a foundation for the future and even thinking about finding a partner to share it all with. Since much of our 20s are often a whirlwind of change, marked by uncertainty, an in-between feeling of not quite being a kid but not fully an adult either, the book offers 20-something readers something to think about their age. Hwang Dong-hee Culture desk reporter "The Age of the Filiarch" by Ysra (Lee Seul-ah) Author Lee Seul-ah introduces a brand-new type of family in her refreshingly original debut novel 'The Age of the Filiarch' — not a patriarchy, not a matriarchy, but a filiarchy — a made-up term from filia (Latin for 'daughter'), where daughters run the household. Sharp, witty and delightfully playful, this autobiographical novel follows a girl born into a family ruled by her grandfather. But over time, she rises to become the head of the house -- through her writing. She founds an indie publishing company, employing two people: her mom and dad. As the family's main breadwinner, she becomes both the financial and emotional center of gravity, sparking a quiet domestic revolution that's equal parts subversive and charming. Can this daughter-led transformation bring happiness to all? The novel made waves upon release, with English translation rights already sold. Lee is also set to make her screenwriting debut with a drama series adaptation currently in development. Lee Jung-youn Culture desk reporter 'Why Fish Don't Exist' by Lulu Miller The book begins with science but gracefully transforms into a warm, personal exploration of how to love oneself. Blurring the lines between novel, essay and scientific thesis, the book transcends genre and theme. Tracing the life of 19th-century scientist David Starr Jordan, the author uncovers both the brilliance and the dark contradictions of his work. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the journey is less about Jordan and more about the insights the author gains along the way. While the question in the title can be answered scientifically, the true meaning of the book lies beyond logic. It challenges the way we categorize the world for convenience, suggesting that such classifications may be arbitrary. It urges us to reconsider the boundaries we impose on ourselves and others, and offers the comforting idea that meaning can emerge from even destruction and loss. Lee Yoon-seo Culture desk reporter "Dopamine Nation" by Anna Lembke We've never lived in a time of such constant, instant gratification — driven by social media, binge-watching, online shopping and more. In "Dopamine Nation," psychiatrist and addiction expert Dr. Anna Lembke delivers a timely message about the risks of living on autopilot in this age of overindulgence. Blending neuroscience with real patient stories, she reveals how leaning into discomfort rather than avoiding it. This can help us feel more grounded, present and fulfilled. With practical strategies such as dopamine fasting and finding meaning through moderation, this book is a useful guide for anyone feeling lost in compulsive habits and searching for a more intentional way to live. Moon Ki-hoon Culture desk reporter "How Democracies Die" by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky Skipped this when it first dropped in 2018 — a big mistake. Picked it up after Trump's comeback, and it turns out these Harvard professors were actually being optimistic. The authors warn that democratic backsliding often begins when voters see opponents not as rivals but as existential threats, and, in doing so, willingly vote away democracy itself. The biggest insight here is that democracies rarely fall to dramatic coups; more often, they erode from within, as elected leaders slowly dismantle norms and institutions. Feels like parts of the free world have already speed-run past some of the worst-case scenarios. Essential reading for understanding how we got here.
Irish Times
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Women's Prize for Fiction winner on The Safekeep, being intersex and her childhood in Israel
It sounds like a hectic afternoon in London when I speak to Yael van der Wouden , author of The Safekeep and winner last Thursday of this year's Women's Prize for Fiction . Speaking on Friday, she says life since hearing she had won the prestigious British literary award and its £30,000 (€35,000) prize has been 'like this, absolutely chaotic', referring to the sirens and beeping noises intruding through the open window. 'It was unreal,' says van der Wouden. 'You prepare yourself for every single scenario and you try to imagine how you would feel with every single scenario, but you can't.' Beyond promoting her work, 'I just get to live my life,' says the Dutch-Israeli author. 'The Netherlands is a very sober country, so no one goes into any kind of heightened emotion over an author existing.' 'It's good because I come here and they give me prizes and then I go home and I'm just a lady in a store,' she says. READ MORE Van der Wouden's debut was up against stiff competition for the prize, including novels by established American writers Elizabeth Strout and Miranda July, along with three other debuts: The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji, Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis and Good Girl by Aria Aber. In her acceptance speech, van der Wouden shared that she was intersex. 'I was a girl until I turned 13, and then as I hit puberty all that was supposed to happen did not quite happen, or if it did happen it happened too much,' she said. 'I won't thrill you too much with the specifics but the long and the short of it is that hormonally I am intersex. [ The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden: Beguiling love story told in language that entertains and enthrals Opens in new window ] 'This little fact defined my life throughout my teens until I advocated for the healthcare that I needed. 'In the few precious moments here on stage I am receiving truly the greatest honour of my life as a woman, presenting to you as a woman and accepting this Women's Prize and that is because of every single trans person who's fought for healthcare, who changed the system, the law, societal standards, themselves. I stand on their shoulders.' What prompted her to share this information? 'To me, that's an integral part of my life and the conversations I have with myself, with my friends and family, with my trans loved ones,' she says. So why now? 'Because it just happened to be that the moment where I and a room full of 800 people met for the first time and so they got to hear me speak for the first time. But it's not anything new on my part. It simply was a new moment for all of us together.' Creativity comes from curiosity. And when you're in survival mode, there's no space for curiosity The Safekeep, which also made the Booker Prize shortlist last year, is based on a repressed and melancholic central character, Isabel, whose world is upended when her brother's girlfriend, Ava, stays with her for the summer. A passionate love affair develops between the women, leading to a thrilling plot twist that van der Wouden asks me to be careful not to reveal. It is not exposing too much to say the novel, set in the Netherlands in 1961, concerns itself with the legacy of the second World War. Does she think there might be a through-line between how the Dutch government of the time treated Jewish people during the war and its contemporary policies under its right-wing government? 'The Netherlands has a specific penchant in using bureaucracy as a form of violence, against migrants, immigrants, refugees, poor people, marginalised people. 'This happened in the fallout of the war, this happened with every single migrant crisis that the country has had, and this specifically happened also around what we call the 'toeslagenaffaire'.' This was a scandal in which Dutch tax authorities used an algorithm to spot suspected benefits fraud. It penalised many low-income, ethnic-minority families. 'And that's what I mean with using bureaucracy as a form of violence: using the minutiae of forms and documents and having people fill in that and fill in that ... the small things that you don't think represent violence and end up creating so much suffering for so many people. 'I don't think [the Netherlands] is unique in that, but I can only speak to my country,' she adds. Being an artist in the Netherlands is more difficult than ever, she says, with funding being 'slashed' in education and the arts. She says her parents, both of whom are animators, received a universal income when they moved to the Netherlands, where her father is from, when van der Wouden was 10, after the family had spent the first decade of her life living in her mother's native Israel. She is now in the very privileged position of being an author who can live off her work, she says, but all of her friends working in education and the arts are struggling. 'They are all splitting themselves in so many ways just to make ends meet and it's hard to do that and keep going, and allow themselves to [be creative]. You can't and it's devastating, and it's infuriating. 'Anxiety shuts down the desire for creativity, but also the ability to be curious, and I think creativity comes from curiosity. And when you're in survival mode, there's no space for curiosity. There's only the next moment, the next day. How will I pay rent? How will I eat? 'I've spent many years [where] I've been on welfare, I've definitely lived off ramen, while trying to avoid medical checks and getting further and further into debt. I've done all of it. And it is possible, but it's very hard to escape into fantasy and escape into curiosity,' she says. She also noted in her acceptance speech that the conversation The Safekeep became part of 'felt all the more important to me, in the face of violence in Gaza and the West Bank and as I've said, the violence my own queer and trans community faces worldwide', she said. Asked about her relationship with Israel, where her mother is from and where she lived until the age of 10, she says, 'I want to be very careful to not create a nostalgic cloud around my childhood, even though my parents made sure I had a fantastic childhood very heavy in the arts ... I had a very creative and very free childhood. 'But I also know that – you know, speaking of what shuts down creativity – living under occupation, living in war, and that's what many Palestinians experience, have experienced then and still experience now, in even more extreme circumstances. 'And I'm in stark opposition to the [Israeli] government [and] I don't want my nostalgia for my childhood to overshadow that,' she says. On whether she would set a novel in Israel, she says: 'I think I would set a novel in a diaspora that is connected to there, but I don't think it's possible for me to set a novel entirely there because I left when I was 10, so it would be the perspective of a 10-year-old in one way or another. But perhaps one day, you never know. But for now, we're sticking to the Netherlands for a little while longer.' She completed a draft of her second novel just before going to London for the Women's Prize festivities. In her research for the book, set in a Dutch fishing village in 1929, she found further evidence of the then-government's use of what she terms 'bureaucracy as violence', as many of the men who lost their jobs in the process of the South Sea being closed off from the North Sea in the early 1930s never received the funding they were promised. And there is also a titillating premise to the novel likely to pique the interest of fans of The Safekeep: a married woman enlists the help of another woman to seduce her husband and frame him for adultery so she can divorce him. Asked why she writes in English, she says her parents mainly spoke English to each other when she was a child, although her mother is now an excellent Dutch speaker. 'I was three years old and my parents were still rummaging around the apartment, and I was already at the door with my little dress and my little sunglasses, very impatient to leave the house. And then I shouted at them, 'Let's go, we gotta go!' And suddenly they realised that they were raising a child in English,' she says, laughing at the memory. Author Paul Murray in Dublin. Photograph: Barry Cronin Van der Wouden has also spoken previously about her love of The Bee Sting by Irish author Paul Murray , and asks, laughing, if I have a spare three hours to discuss its merits. She particularly admires how Murray portrays Imelda, a leading character whose inner life and background are revealed as the book progresses. 'With Imelda, you think, because up until that moment you only see her through the other characters' perspective, and she's quite awful in their POV [point of view]. And then you go to her POV and, honestly, that was ... the most wonderful experience of being proven wrong about a character and falling in love with character, but the language just completely upended my understanding of what we could do with language in character work in novels. And she still is, and I think forever will be, one of my favourite characters in literature.'
The Guardian
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Women's prize winner Yael van der Wouden: ‘It's heartbreaking to see so much hatred towards queer people'
It has been a dramatic couple of years for 37-year-old Dutch author Yael van der Wouden: her first novel, The Safekeep, a love story that deals with the legacy of the Holocaust in the Netherlands, was the focus of a frenzied bidding war and shortlisted for the 2024 Booker prize. Last night it won the Women's prize for fiction. 'I wrote this book from a place of hopelessness,' she says when we meet. 'I was looking for a ray of sunshine.' This morning in London the sun is blazing. She could never have expected that her novel would see off shortlisted authors including Miranda July (of whose work she is a big fan) and Elizabeth Strout. Warm and open, the author is shorter than I expected. Coming as she does from a country of tall people, as she jokes: 'I have tall energy.' She has great energy, despite several glasses of champagne last night and only a few hours' sleep. On her shoulder is a tattoo of a hare – an important symbol in the novel – which she had done after completing the book. In her tearful acceptance speech, Van der Wouden told the audience that when she hit puberty: 'all at once, my girlhood became an uncertain fact.' The fact that she is hormonally intersex 'was a huge part of my 20s, and then I got the healthcare that I needed … I am receiving truly the greatest honour of my life as a woman, presenting to you as a woman and accepting this Women's prize and that is because of every single trans person who's fought for healthcare, who changed the system, the law, societal standards, themselves. I stand on their shoulders.' It was the first time she has spoken about it publicly. Not to have done so she tells me, 'wouldn't have been me. I had my five minutes on stage and I figured what better moment to share something that I care about? It's heartbreaking to see so much hatred toward trans identities, queer identities.' Set in the Netherlands in 1961, The Safekeep is a tense psychological thriller and tender love story between two very different women, Isabel and Eva. It is a story of dispossession and self-discovery, national and intimate secrets and shame. 'This is a novel about a woman who is obsessed with a house, and then a stranger comes and upends her life,' the author says. Isabel is gentile, Eva is Jewish. To say much more would be to give away clues in a narrative that unfolds in a series of jagged revelations, like the shards of broken china Isabel cherishes, that come together to make a devastating and beautiful whole. The idea for the novel came to her 'as a parting gift' in a car on the way to one of the funerals of her Dutch grandparents, who died within days of each other in 2021. 'It came from a place of trying to escape grief,' she says. 'I was trying to find distraction in my own head, as I've done since I was a kid.' Born in Israel in 1987 to a Jewish mother of Romanian and Bulgarian heritage and a Dutch father, Van der Wouden, who describes herself as a 'Dutch-Israeli mixed-bag-diaspora child', spent her first 10 years in Ramat Gan, a city just east of Tel Aviv. She is careful not to talk about her childhood through what she calls 'a pink cloud' of nostalgia because of her vehement opposition to the Israel-Gaza war – she would like to see 'a ceasefire with immediate aid'. Both her parents were animators (her father created an Israeli version of Sesame Street) and while she and her two younger sisters were encouraged to engage with all art forms, she was not at all bookish. It wasn't until the family moved to the Netherlands when she was 10 that Van der Wouden discovered books – with Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden being a particular favourite. But she also discovered antisemitism, while living with her grandparents in a house in the forest. Though that home is still her 'happy place', going from cosmopolitan Tel Aviv to 'being the only Jew in the village' wasn't easy. To her new Dutch classmates she resembled Anne Frank. Now, she has no time for the rhetoric of tolerance. 'I think that's a terrible word, because tolerance is putting up with somebody. I want to be desired. I want to be loved. Rather than writing a story about tolerance, I wanted to write a story about love in the aftermath of war.' With Isabel, she created a character who goes from prejudice and repulsion to desire. There is a lot (an entire chapter) of sex in the novel. She laughs. 'My goal was to imbue the whole book with a sense of tension, and that tension is erotic.' Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion She deliberately chose the perspective of Isabel rather than Eva, so as not just to tell the victim's story. 'There's also many parts of perpetrator within me, within my history,' she says. Van der Wouden had never read a novel that explored what she calls 'the psyche of quiet complicity'. Through Isabel she wanted to show that 'complicity comes from small and uninteresting acts of dismissal', and it is something of which we are all guilty. 'It's part of the human experience. The question is, how do we deal with knowing that we looked away from something terrible, how do we then move forward?' The emotional power of the novel rests on the way in which Isabel reveals herself to be someone completely different, even to herself. 'What's like me,' Isabel says to her brother. 'There's no such thing. Like me.' This speaks to Van der Wouden's personal experience. 'We don't leave this life in the same bodies were born into, we are always under flux,' she says. 'This is not to say that gender and sexuality is a choice followed by change, but rather that change is an inherent part of life.' On the question of the supreme court ruling on gender rights, she adds: 'To subject that to law feels baffling to me, especially as it is accompanied by legal, verbal and physical violence.' Much of The Safekeep was written during lockdown in Utrecht, where she had an attic apartment overlooking the canal. 'A beautiful golden cage,' she says. She now lives half an hour away in Rotterdam, where she is thrilled to have a garden. She has already completed the first draft of a second novel set in a fishing village in the Netherlands in 1929. Her greatest hope for the novel as it goes on to find a bigger audience, 'if this isn't too saccharine,' she says apologetically, 'is, in fact, hope.'
