Based on a true story, this delightfully written and simple story about memory is told from the perspective of 11-year-old Jeska.
It is set in the Netherlands during the late 1960s. Jeska is a bright girl who sometimes takes to daydreaming but she is beginning o realise that World War II and the treatment of Jews in Holland was a significant event that impacted her mother. As Jeska finds out through the course of this short novel, not all memories are pleasant. As her father explains, ‘If you cut yourself badly, you can be left with a scar, even when the wound has healed. It can be the same when you experience terrible hardship: the memory of it becomes a scar.’
I’ll Keep You Close is Jeska’s story of her discovery of her mother’s scar and an explanation of why her mother behaves the way she does. The dark room, the insistence on quiet in the house, the need to make herself small and not draw attention to herrself. It is also a novel about guilt, the guilt her mother feels being the only survivor of her family.
This is a different type of Holocaust novel and one worth reading, alongside Morris Geitzman’s ‘Once’ series.
Reviewed by Anthony Llewellyn-Evans
Age Guide 8+
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeska Verstegen is an author and illustrator living in Amsterdam. She is a descendant of Emanuel Querido, the revolutionary Jewish-Dutch publisher who was captured and killed by the Nazis in World War II. Jeska began her career in 1990 as an illustrator for magazines and children’s books.
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