The Kept: A Novel

By James Scott

With shades of Charles Portis, Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O’Connor, this is a gothic western transferred to the ice-locked wilds of upstate New York at the turn of the 20th century; a brutal and searing debut novel about a mother’s obsession and a son’s search for answers in the wake of a terrible and violent tragedy.

In the winter of 1897, midwife Elspeth Howell returns to her isolated farmstead to find her husband and four of her five children murdered. Before she discovers her remaining son, Caleb, alive and hiding in the kitchen pantry, she is shot.

Caleb nurses his mother back to health, cleaning her wounds and keeping her fed, before he and Elspeth leave their home to seek retribution from the men who committed this heinous crime. As they travel from country to town to hunt the murderers, the reader learns of Elspeth’s deep secret--that she kidnapped the very children who call her mother--and questions her role in the novel’s initial violence. Meanwhile Caleb is confronted with the ways of a world he’s never known. The line between justice and vengeance is thrown into question as Caleb and Elspeth are forced to reconsider their relationship and what unknown future lies ahead for both of them.

The Kept is a portrait of both maternal obsessions and a primal adolescence in a brutal world. Fans of True Grit’s Mattie Ross and All the Pretty Horses’s Jimmy Blevins will love Caleb Howell, the next great old-beyond-his-years protaganist of an unforgettable literary Western--this time set in the icy wilderness of the East Coast.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jan 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781443418409

James Scott

James Scott was born in Boston and grew up in upstate New York. He holds a BA from Middlebury College and an MFA from Emerson College. His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, American Short Fiction, and other publications. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and dog. The Kept is his first novel.

Reviews for The Kept

[violetthedwarf · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

look, being 'literary' doesn't excuse poor plotting or not having a goddamn ending.

Utterly unsatisfying and confusing.

Look, I read Victorian novels for fun. A book like this should have been my sort of thing. I just don't think Taylor did the Victoriana well. It was far too knowing at times, and far too earnest and others - and honestly, Taylor isn't good enough at writing characters that sound different to manage a book of this scope. It's too easy to get confused between the characters as they all seem so similar.

[hardlyhardy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A few modern novels set in the Victorian Age read like they might have actually been written during that period. D.J. Taylor's "Kept" (2007) is one of them. Taylor, better known as the biographer of George Orwell and William Thackeray than as a novelist, shows a gift for writing in a Victorian voice.Of course, this Victorian voice does make his book a bit of a challenge for modern readers. Two oddities about the novel add to the difficulties.1. The story has no protagonist. The title refers to an attractive widow who is being held against her will in a spooky country home belonging to to man whose main interests are collecting bird eggs and raising vicious dogs. This man, James Dixey, eventually falls in love with his prisoner, Isabel Ireland. Yet neither of these characters, nor anyone other character in the novel, can really be called the main character. There is no main character. The plot shifts from scene to scene, from character to character, making it difficult for readers to find a high point from which to view the whole story.2. Most fiction is told either from an omniscient, third-person point of view or from a limited first-person point of view. In other words, the narrator either knows everything or only what one particular character in the story happens to know. In "Kept," Taylor strangely employs both points of view at the same time. Phrases like "it seems to me" and "I think" abound throughout the novel, suggesting that the story is being told by some close observer of events. Yet a few sentences later this narrator is revealing characters' thought and private actions, things only an omniscient narrator could know. It's a bit bothersome not knowing who this first-person narrator is or how he happens to know so much about a story that involves so many different locales and so many different characters.Despite these difficulties and these oddities, I found "Kept" to be enjoyable reading

[dsc73277 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Taylor references - openly, the debt being acknowledged - a raft of great nineteenth century novelists in this 400 plus page heavyweight. Sadly, "heavyweight" rather sums it up. I found this rather hard going. For me, the key characteristic of Trollope or Dickens that was missing here was the liveliness.

[priscillam_80 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Whilst the writing and the language were evocative of the time, I was disappointed with this novel. Maybe I was expecting too much after having read 'Oliver Twist' by Dickens, "The Woman in White' by Wilkie Collins and 'Far from the Madding Crowd' by Thomas Hardy.The Story starts interestingly enough with the seemingly unrelated deaths of two gentleman and the decent into madness of a young widow who is then in effect imprissioned in a decaying country estate belonging to a strange elderly gentleman entrusted with her care. However the story then takes a long time to come together, with each chapter featuring various, at times, seemingly unconnected people or events including, a pet mouse, a wolf, a failed grogery salesman, a train robbery, lawyers, mens clubs, a pushy mother and other seedy characters. I admit at times to considering putting the book aside. I was glad when I reached the end, where I suppose after what seemed a very long time,everything did come together. Overall though, It didn't live up to the cover blurb.

[simon_carr_18 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A pastiche of course, but a totally intentional one. If you're looking for action and high adventure then this is probably not for you. If, however, you enjoy characterisation and descriptive prose, sentences constructed in the highest of high Victorian then read on. Both the descriptions of the bleak fens and the poverty of the London slums are brought evocatively to life. There are echoes of Dickens and Thackery and (strangely uncredited) Wilkie Collins. As a Patrick O'Brien devotee I was constantly reminded of his work - perhaps more because both authors are so thoroughly imbued in the period (although Aubrey and Maturin are a good 50 years earlier of course), rather than any direct comparison between the two. Cleverly the author writes from a variety of view points - first person narrative, excerpts from letters, newspaper clippings and the like. I think it is fair to say that no two chapters are alike.The plot is almost incidental to the story but includes all the best Victorian themes - murder, kidnapping and theft. If you accept this novel for what it is then you will enjoy it greatly.

[maryintexas39 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was expecting much more from this book. I think it fell apart at the end (or at least it lost my interest).

[kasthu_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Kept is a Victorian murder mystery. Set in the 1860s, the book opens when an East Anglia squire falls from his horse and dies. His wife later goes mad and goes to live at Easton Hall, the home of Jonas Dixey, an eccentric, amateur taxidermist. Seemingly unconnected is a train robbery orchestrated by a couple of crooked lawyers and their henchmen. Channeling Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, and the sensationalist novelists of the 1860s, Taylor gives us a wonderfully descriptive picture of Victorian England. It’s clear that the author has done his research. While it takes a little while for the book to get to the point, the mystery is a little anticlimactic, and the book doesn’t really seem to have a proper ending, the characters in the novel are intriguing, lively, and unique. By far my favorite character was Esther, the lively kitchenmaid at Easton Hall. You never know where the story is going to take you next, and that’s what I liked about Kept. It’s similar to The Meaning of Night in that it provides its reader with a reasonably realistic, understated, and fictionalized view of Victorian England.

[elizajane_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It is very hard to tell the plot of this book as there are many things going on. Two main stories run parallel throughout until they come together at the end. One being the mysterious mad woman kept under lock and key, the other follows a crooked lawyer who collects debts for his clients. There are also many side stories that intertwine these main stories. There is a maid who works in the house where the mad woman is kept, a young footman who falls under the spell of the crooked lawyer, an impoverished man whose wife is dying, the embarrassed landowner who would rather collect rare eggs than look after his property, the young man who seeks adventure in the wilds of Canada and so very many more. This was a wonderful book that pays homage to the classic Victorian novel. There are literary allusions aplenty and many nods to authors such as Dickens and London. The huge ensemble of characters are skillfully woven through the pages and each in their own way, no matter how infinitesimal, plays a part in the grand scheme of the plot. A wonderful, engrossing novel with a very satisfying ending and highly recommended.

[nperrin_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The mystery in this novel remained obscure - at least to me - until perhaps three-quarters of the way through. Taylor's method of narration, which I found fascinating and well-executed, means that the reader is left unraveling even the parts of the story that aren't mysterious per se. For me, this was most of the fun of the story. Also, Taylor pulls off the style of the Victorian novel extremely well - the tone is right, the subplots are right, the huge cast of characters is right, and the way everything is wrapped up in the end is right as well (though not quite as satisfying as, say, Dickens). Recommended for those who like a puzzle, and especially for those who enjoy multiple threads of narration.

[bcquinnsmom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As I was reading through this, the thought struck me that I was really enjoying it because the author tried very hard to present his story in the manner of an actual novel written during the Victorian period. I love Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, etc and it occurred to me that the reason I love reading these guys is that the stories each writes is not just one single story, but a host of plots, subplots, character portraits and loose threads that come to be tied together at the end. I realized that Taylor was doing quite a fine job of setting forth Kept in such a manner, and it works, to a point. It is, of course, NOT a true novel written during that time, but more of a pastiche. The story itself is quite good and held my interest throughout the entire book. It opens with the death of one Henry Ireland, dead from a fall from his horse. Or at least, that is what it looks like he died from. He leaves behind Isabel, his wife, who is somewhat mentally unbalanced. Isabel is taken in by Mr. Dixey, a naturalist living out in the country as society begins to wonder exactly what has happened to her. Enter also a group of plotters who want to rob a train of its gold bullion & coins and you have enough to keep you busy for a while.A very delightful novel; the characterizations are, for the most part, done very well and the writing is quite good. I would recommend this book to others who like modern novels set in the Victorian period; this one is not a cozy by any stretch. I really appreciated the author's efforts to try to make it sound somewhat authentic.