Isabel den Brave

Isabel den Brave is the main character of the novel. The third person narrator inhabits her perspective throughout the narrative and renders the narrative world through her distinct lens. In the narrative present, Isabel is living alone in her family home. She has resided here by herself ever since her mother Elisabeth’s death. Isabel’s uncle Karel “found the house for [her mother and brothers] in the winter of ‘44,” at “the tail end” of World War II (28). Because “only children were allowed to cross” the border at the time Isabel, Hendrik, and Louis went ahead to the house before their mother joined them there (28). Isabel does not remember this era very well, as she was still young. However, she is attached to the house in the present because it is the only thing that she can call her own and the only place she knows...