‘I think it’s an investigation of belonging – one that we didn’t have a literal space for before.”
I’m on the phone with the novelist Yael van der Wouden, conferring with her about a recent trend in LGBTQ+ writing: a preoccupation with houses. I figured she would be a good person to talk to because her new novel The Safekeep centres on a lonely old house in the Dutch countryside that suddenly, one summer, is flooded with queer desire and intrigue. The problem is that the Booker-shortlisted author is talking to me in transit, touring Europe, at this moment on a train rattling across northern Italy. Reader, witness the irony of our discussing ideas of rootedness and belonging as Van der Wouden keeps getting ousted from her seat. She says she’ll have to call me back.
