Isabel lives alone in the family home, in the provincial Dutch quiet of Overijssel. She is nearly 30, though, and unmarried, and in this 1960s backwater a woman cannot live this way indefinitely. Her younger brother Hendrik holds no claim over the house, but their older brother does: it will fall to Louis as soon as he brings home a bride. Their Uncle Karel has willed this, and since he is the one who secured the house for the family in the first place, Isa lives there only as custodian – that is to say, only on sufferance. Isa suffers,...