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carstensena's review against another edition
4.0
This is about as stark as you can get. I enjoyed reading it -- wonderful writing -- but I can't figure out who I would recommend it to. Despite one young character's coming of age, it is too slow-paced for teens. I can't remember the last book I read in which the characters spoke (aloud) less. But they certainly feel very deeply. Full of powerful visual imagery.
melissapalmer404's review against another edition
3.0
Book #6 Read in 2014
The Kept by James Scott
This book started off with an exciting premise...a woman comes home to find her husband and children murdered, save one. Caleb survives and swears vengeance on the ones who murdered his family. His mother realizes that the sins of her past (stealing the children she helped delivered) may have caused for these murders to happen....but she goes along with Caleb on his quest for revenge. That being said, this book was a slow read for me....I had to force myself to finish. I did not really care about the characters and what happened to them.
http://melissasbookpicks.blogspot.com
The Kept by James Scott
This book started off with an exciting premise...a woman comes home to find her husband and children murdered, save one. Caleb survives and swears vengeance on the ones who murdered his family. His mother realizes that the sins of her past (stealing the children she helped delivered) may have caused for these murders to happen....but she goes along with Caleb on his quest for revenge. That being said, this book was a slow read for me....I had to force myself to finish. I did not really care about the characters and what happened to them.
http://melissasbookpicks.blogspot.com
cook_memorial_public_library's review against another edition
4.0
One of Becky's favorites of 2014.
Check our catalog: http://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore/search/C__Sthe%20kept%20scott__Orightresult__U?lang=eng&suite=pearl
Check our catalog: http://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore/search/C__Sthe%20kept%20scott__Orightresult__U?lang=eng&suite=pearl
anitaofplaybooktag's review against another edition
3.0
The Kept is a debut novel that focuses on a mother, Elspeth, and her 12 year old son, Caleb, set in upstate NY at the turn of the century. The book opens with Caleb's family being brutally murdered while Elspeth is away working as a midwife. The remainder of the book deals with Caleb's search for revenge and Elspeth's attempts to cope with the sins of her past.
This book had a lot of great components that generally I would really enjoy - - an upstate NY setting (where I am from), a lovely lyrical writing style, darkness and psychological suspense, historical setting, and a mother/son story. Unfortunately, it just didn't all come together for me, and it's a little hard to pinpoint exactly why not. I think a great deal of the issue was that I struggled to really believe the story. It's told well enough, but there were just too many strange circumstances to create an aura of believability. The actions of the son were just not realistic given his age. Make him 15 or 16, and I might have bought into it, but 12? The motivations of the various characters also seemed somewhat suspect to me . . .including the motivation behind the initial murder of the family. Each circumstance just seemed a little too far fetched. And while generally I find something more unusual in a story might grab my interest, the combination of too many unbelievable components did just the opposite. The ending is left for the reader to fill in to some degree, and I definitely do not think it was a successful attempt. It was as though the writer got tired of telling the story, and frankly I got a little tired of reading it as well.
All this being said, I think Scott has a lot of potential. His writing style really reminded me of Geraldine Brooks, and I think he has some interesting ideas. I'd like to see what he does next. For me, this book didn't quite work, but there were some great scenes and some fascinating elements. The creativity is there, and I look forward to seeing where he takes his talents.
mattnixon's review against another edition
2.0
(2.5-star review) The Kept, James Scott’s debut novel, is a blizzard of a book: oppressive, bleak, messy and (mostly) barren of humanity.
A snow-choked 1897 upstate New York provides The Kept’s setting and Scott’s greatest exhibited strength is the book’s sense of time-and-place. Locations and the difficulties of day-to-day life are vivid and evocative. The Kept’s atmosphere is robust and sensory – I felt the cold and smelled the heady mixture of hay, burning wood and horse manure in the streets. Ultimately, the strong atmosphere chokes out everything else…in fact, the atmosphere is the only thing that has stayed with me.
The modern Western genre’s themes of vengeance, judgment and redemptive violence largely comprise The Kept’s story elements. I’ll refrain from plot explication – those interested in reading it would find it spoilery, but that’s not my reason. Ultimately, I find a discussion of the book’s plot pointless because Scott could have made almost anything happen within his 350-odd pages and each action and outcome would have been equally plausible to what he decided on.
And therein lies the problem with The Kept: character action is solely dictated by plot demands. Mother Elspeth and son Caleb are the lynchpins of the narrative. We see the world through their eyes and perceive the events through their backgrounds and emotions. But both characters are only the sum of their past actions (as related to the reader). Neither has a coherent inner life. Neither is an actual person.
Scott (over) uses flashbacks (to often confusing effect, though I admit this could just be my problem) to fill in Elspeth and Caleb’s backstories, but those stories ultimately do little to illuminate their actions…in some cases they obfuscate them. I never knew why either character was taking their respective actions except to move the plot forward and set up dramatic ironies.
Elspeth’s motivations vacillated between guilt, revenge, self-preservation, and self-indulgence. But these weren't the result of a coherent, narratively-earned inner conflict, but rather of plot exigencies.
In Caleb’s case, his motivations were clearer but his faculties and intuitions were wildly discordant. One moment he was a sheltered naïf who had never left his isolated farm and never interacted with a human being outside of his parents and siblings. The next, he moves effortlessly within a city, employed at a saloon/brothel so he has a better vantage from which to find his targets and hatch his plan of revenge. And then back again…Like Elspeth’s, Caleb’s actions (and abilities to perceive a situation and competently carry out these actions) weren't logical manifestations of his character, but rather driven solely by plot concerns.
In The Kept, author James Scott slathers atmosphere with a garden trowel—effectively at times, but ultimately oppressively—to build a sense of doom and inevitability, yet fails to create fully-formed, coherent human characters that drive action.
The modern Western frequently provides heroes whose lives lead up to a decisive, near-inevitable act of redemptive violence. The Kept required decisive, violent acts and yanked around its two-dimensional, people-ish characters to make them happen.
A snow-choked 1897 upstate New York provides The Kept’s setting and Scott’s greatest exhibited strength is the book’s sense of time-and-place. Locations and the difficulties of day-to-day life are vivid and evocative. The Kept’s atmosphere is robust and sensory – I felt the cold and smelled the heady mixture of hay, burning wood and horse manure in the streets. Ultimately, the strong atmosphere chokes out everything else…in fact, the atmosphere is the only thing that has stayed with me.
The modern Western genre’s themes of vengeance, judgment and redemptive violence largely comprise The Kept’s story elements. I’ll refrain from plot explication – those interested in reading it would find it spoilery, but that’s not my reason. Ultimately, I find a discussion of the book’s plot pointless because Scott could have made almost anything happen within his 350-odd pages and each action and outcome would have been equally plausible to what he decided on.
And therein lies the problem with The Kept: character action is solely dictated by plot demands. Mother Elspeth and son Caleb are the lynchpins of the narrative. We see the world through their eyes and perceive the events through their backgrounds and emotions. But both characters are only the sum of their past actions (as related to the reader). Neither has a coherent inner life. Neither is an actual person.
Scott (over) uses flashbacks (to often confusing effect, though I admit this could just be my problem) to fill in Elspeth and Caleb’s backstories, but those stories ultimately do little to illuminate their actions…in some cases they obfuscate them. I never knew why either character was taking their respective actions except to move the plot forward and set up dramatic ironies.
Elspeth’s motivations vacillated between guilt, revenge, self-preservation, and self-indulgence. But these weren't the result of a coherent, narratively-earned inner conflict, but rather of plot exigencies.
In Caleb’s case, his motivations were clearer but his faculties and intuitions were wildly discordant. One moment he was a sheltered naïf who had never left his isolated farm and never interacted with a human being outside of his parents and siblings. The next, he moves effortlessly within a city, employed at a saloon/brothel so he has a better vantage from which to find his targets and hatch his plan of revenge. And then back again…Like Elspeth’s, Caleb’s actions (and abilities to perceive a situation and competently carry out these actions) weren't logical manifestations of his character, but rather driven solely by plot concerns.
In The Kept, author James Scott slathers atmosphere with a garden trowel—effectively at times, but ultimately oppressively—to build a sense of doom and inevitability, yet fails to create fully-formed, coherent human characters that drive action.
The modern Western frequently provides heroes whose lives lead up to a decisive, near-inevitable act of redemptive violence. The Kept required decisive, violent acts and yanked around its two-dimensional, people-ish characters to make them happen.
kadeherrera's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
lazygal's review against another edition
4.0
Quieter than your usual mystery, yet still fairly blood-soaked, The Kept was a rather unusual read for me. Set in the late 1800s we have train travel but little other technology, but at first, before I realized the timeframe, I thought it might have been set in Amish country. The winter cold adds to the bleak atmosphere and the sense of impending... something. Not quite doom, but something.
Elspeth is a midwife who spends months away from her family, who live on a remote farm in what I think is upstate New York. She's a sinner in some unnamed way, expecting some sort of punishment for these unspecified crimes. However she does not expect to return home to a family brutally murdered - nor does she expect to be shot. Luckily(?) the shooter is her 12-year-old son Caleb, who then tends to her in addition to preparing a funeral pyre for his siblings that gets out of hand, thus burning down the family home; he struggles to move himself and Elspeth to the barn where slowly they both heal enough to go after the men who murdered everyone.
Caleb never seems to wonder about why the men came, while Elspeth seems to assume that it's retribution for whatever it is she did earlier. They end up in a town, apparently Caleb's birthplace, and settle in to find the killers... you'll have to read to learn What Happens Next.
As I said, there's a lot of blood (not all of it murder-related) and a lot of atmosphere. Family is central to the book, including the questions of what family is and what it means. With just a few pacing tweaks this could have been a five star; as is, it's a solid 4.5.
ARC provided by publisher.
Elspeth is a midwife who spends months away from her family, who live on a remote farm in what I think is upstate New York. She's a sinner in some unnamed way, expecting some sort of punishment for these unspecified crimes. However she does not expect to return home to a family brutally murdered - nor does she expect to be shot. Luckily(?) the shooter is her 12-year-old son Caleb, who then tends to her in addition to preparing a funeral pyre for his siblings that gets out of hand, thus burning down the family home; he struggles to move himself and Elspeth to the barn where slowly they both heal enough to go after the men who murdered everyone.
Caleb never seems to wonder about why the men came, while Elspeth seems to assume that it's retribution for whatever it is she did earlier. They end up in a town, apparently Caleb's birthplace, and settle in to find the killers... you'll have to read to learn What Happens Next.
As I said, there's a lot of blood (not all of it murder-related) and a lot of atmosphere. Family is central to the book, including the questions of what family is and what it means. With just a few pacing tweaks this could have been a five star; as is, it's a solid 4.5.
ARC provided by publisher.