Kept by D.J. Taylor

Kept Reviews

• 
  Sarah Mac

  This was better than I was expecting, but I wouldn't recommend it to general audiences. The style is hardcore pastiche -- not just a literary novel set in the Victorian period (e.g., something by Sarah Waters), but a deliberate & very thorough mock-up of the Dickens, Gaskell, & Thackery schools of fiction. (The author makes no attempt to hide his influences; indeed, he lists them by name in the afterward.) Accordingly, Kept moves at a slow pace & takes its own sweet time with each character. The plot is a complicated web of seemingly unrelated events (which are, of course, loosely connected by the end), but I'll break it down to the essential elements:
  
  -the disappearance of a widow (who may or may not be insane)
  -an eccentric naturalist recluse keeping said widow locked in an upstairs room for (likely) nefarious reasons
  -a Masterful Crime/Get Rich Quick scheme by one SMRT criminal & several lesser henchmen
  -a goodhearted young maid's interpretation of events she's not completely understanding
  
  Weaving in & out of these major points are several smaller stories, including (but not limited to) aging lawyers & aspiring politicians & a young curate in love & another maid who can't stop the downward spiral of her life. Some scenes are criminal plotting, others are diary format, others are semi-gothic, & still others are countryside social drama. So, yes -- very Dickensian, right down to the omnicient narrator who's compiling these various threads. Like all good storytellers, this narrator has a keen sense of dark humor; his asides & dry editorial comments are some of the best quips of the book.
  
  ...But it's most definitely not for everyone. (Quite honestly, I'm not shocked that the Goodreads rating is low.)
  
  This is a dense novel that demands your full attention, but the writing is very readable if you don't mind Victorian-style wordiness. It's a good example of what happens when literary fiction doesn't take itself too seriously -- that is, an erudite novel that doesn't wrap itself in its own inaccessiblity. (Also, the author included endnotes on some of the more obscure political references.) Stuff does happen, & it keeps the plot moving forward -- I promise. :P But I think the publishers made a mistake by printing "mystery" on the dustjacket. Devious plans & questionable sanity don't make a mystery -- at least not in the modern sense of Agatha Christie or Patricia Cornwell.
  
  I'm sure most people will be scared off by this review, but that's okay. As I said, it's not a novel for everyone...unless you're one of those quirky folks who enjoy Victorian pastiche fiction.
• 
  Caitlin

  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.
• 
  Liviu

  looking for something else a few days ago, found this book which i bought years ago and then completely forgot about and with an 'I spent money on, see if I get any value" more than anything else feeling, I took a look and just got hooked on it
  
  not an easy read as it uses 19th century English (see contemporary novels, Dickens etc), moves between multiple pov's and locations, different social classes and occupations, uses various forms of narration, from journal entries to third person pov, so Kept is a book that keeps baffling and sometimes frustrating the reader as something starts happening and one wants to see where it goes, but next page action moves somewhere seemingly very different, so it takes patience and real interest to keep going, but I kept returning to it until I finished it reading the last 100+ pages (and the few appendices that serve as a sort of epilogue) in one sitting
  
  no real "heroes" and a few villains, some really memorable like the fulcrum of the novel, one middle aged Mr. Pardew with an unsuspecting wife in the countryside and a young mistress in London, currently owning a debt collection business, but also, schemer, blackmailer, possibly killer, involved in a 19th century form of money laundering, a plot to kill a rich man and defraud his heiress wife as well as planning the greatest robbery of recent times, if only he will have the nerve to carry on; around him various no-good employees of his, lawyers and aristocrats who owe him, a sinister old man on an estate with a passion for collecting, his servants and the local young clergyman, the police officer who investigates, the heiress herself and a few others, with action jumping from one to another seemingly at random many times, though as the novel goes on a pattern is revealed
  
  overall darkly funny and ironic, compelling despite its narrative difficulty and a book worth persevering till the end
• 
  Nancy Oakes

  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.
• 
  Chana

  Very, very, very, very, very wordy. Too many words. The author, well I am guessing that he loves words, and I understand that love of words, but the author's overuse of words in this novel made it difficult to read, I was getting lost in the all the words, couldn't keep the thread of the story.
  But the wordiness wasn't the only problem. He was using a blind stitch for his thread. It was story after story seemingly unconnected, new characters often introduced in whole subplots, the whole mass of the previous subplots needing to be held in the mind while plodding through new subplots, trying to remember character's names, events and how everything might relate. I didn't think the story had an ebb and flow; it was just a steady river of words with never one thing standing out. Eventually I grabbed hold of the character Dixey, and then Mrs. Ireland and Esther, less so all the criminal characters, and society characters, and lawyer characters, and servant characters, and religious characters and filler characters. It took me a long time to read and it was an effort, this was not a page turner, at least not for me. I was caught by surprise when it ended. I turned the page and it was notes. I turned back and saw I had read the last page. The story just ends, no difference to anything else written. That is what I mean by no ebb and flow. I walked through the book and right out without realizing it.
  
• 
  Laura Morrigan

  Readers used to a more modern style of writing may find this book a little challenging, but it is well worth persevering!
  
  Kept has a wide range of characters, the connections between which will not be immediately seen, and often uses different forms of writing, such as the epistolatory form of letters which was highly popular during the Victorian Era. It also uses a lot of Victorian turn of phrase, and the style of the omniscient narrator, but sometimes addressing the author personally, breaking the fourth wall, we would say in film. There is also the style common with some older novels, of occasionally lapsing into present tense.
  
  For me, as someone who loves literature and the Victorian era, I found that all these things added to the charm! I really felt like I was reading a novel from the era, and the well-written descriptions and wry humour really helped me become a part of the world. I also liked the mix of events, from crime, to even some rather gothic scenes in the old house. The mysteries of what is going on unravel slowly in a wonderful way.
  
  The author has a great knowledge of all the facts of the era, the artists, authors, newspapers, every detail feels spot on, and I find the references to writers and artists fascinating! He perfectly captures the minutiae of Victorian life in London and Scotland. The book has a very real feeling with palpable descriptions, creating a very real world within its pages.
  
  It was fascinating to watch the stories intertwine as the story reached its conclusion. I must admit, I hoped for a happier ending for some of the characters, even though I knew it was unlikely. The story felt very real, and the endings kept with that. I need to find out which others of the main characters might have been real people, and the author cleverly interwove many real aspects of the time into his work.
  
  The story also deals sensitively with mental illness and its treatment at the time, although, I think, had the character not been of the upper classes, her treatment would have been far worse.
  
  There are so many things I want to talk about in regards to the book, but I don't want to spoil the story, because its unravelling is one of its pleasures. Just take it from me, this book is a must read!
• 
  Helen

  I can't believe so many reviewers couldn't give this novel more than 1 or 2 stars. For me, it's an absolutely perfect book and one of my all time favourites. I've read probably 80 plus novels per year for 5 decades and I found this was something really special. Interesting characters, good period setting, wicked humour and irresistable story lines.
  
  I also liked the fact that it didn't seem to need any of the essential ingredients of so much modern literature; great beauties, strong grey-eyed men, love affairs, ridiculous sex scenes, bad parents etc etc. The characters were enormously interesting without needing any of these embellishments. Proper people; struggling with life, ugly and mad.
• 
  Teresa

  had me gripped throughout - would have given it five stars but the ending disappointed me - more of a whimper than a bang. Excellent writing, you are really drawn into this murky Victorian world and the characters in it. If you enjoy Victorian style Gothic tales this one will satisfy and I think it's a read for male and female alike.
• 
  Ashley Knights

  Pretty engaging and interesting, but I started to get confused about which character was which. And the ending left things hanging a bit.
• 
  Kate

  Back in high school creative writing class, I had an assignment to write a soap opera script, which would then be read in front of the class. It’s not often that you get assigned to write something so ridiculous, so I went all out. In the span of 10 pages, there was amnesia caused by a tragic ladder accident, rival doctors, scheming exes, secret twins, buried treasure, familial revelations, covert relationships, and dramatic comas. It was a masterpiece. Of course, soap opera conventions are in and of themselves simple; it’s how the writers combine them that makes the whole thing complex. When you take something with already complex conventions and try to shove them into one document, things get a little hairy.
  
  D.J. Taylor’s Kept is a web of Victorian literature tropes that can be mind-boggling to decipher. Here’s a short list of the conventions I was able to identify: deranged woman in the attic, heiress kept against her will, gothic setting, people reaching too far about their station and failing miserably, paid-by-the-letter subscription wordiness and servant/master relations. I am not faulting Taylor for these conventions; indeed, he does well by them. There were some points that I thought I was reading Dickens. However, the combination of all of the little details, instead of creating a Victorian supernovel, just becomes confusing. The connections between a murder in the beginning of the novel, a naturalist, a daring train robber, and the woman in the attic are all drawn by the end, but tenuously. I’ve had a night to marinate the story in my mind and I’m still not entirely sure what happened.
  
  Though the plot is convoluted and the novel itself suffered from Too Many Characters Syndrome (if I��m bored someday, I’m going to count them all), it is in no way a bad book. I think that we have Kept credit for striving for authenticity. I honestly believe that if you had plopped this book in front of me after finished my college Victorian Literature course, I might have mistaken it for some Dickens protégé. If you read this book, you’ll appreciate the level of detail, but, for your own sake, take notes. Then share them with me.
  
• 
  Karyl

  I knew going into this book that it would be very Dickensian, with many characters and sub-plots and intertwining stories. I loved the idea, but I don't feel that Taylor executed it well. I found myself confused by all of the characters, since they blended together so well, without much in the way of individual differentiation, and I wasn't fond of the differing methods of story-telling Taylor employed. Sometimes the novel was in the first person, sometimes in the third person. Sometimes letters would take over the telling of the story. Sometimes there were newspaper articles or journal entries. It was all so very confusing. The novel felt bloated by all of its characters; did the reader really need an account of Farrier's near-disaster in Canada when he was such a tiny part of the story? I believe this novel would have benefited incredibly from some harsh editing and tightening up of the plot.
• 
  Linda

  I was very disappointed in this book. Yes, it was Victorian times, but it was NOT a mystery. Far from it. We had almost all the facts before we started. The only real "mysteries" were who killed Henry Ireland and James Dixey. And who murdered them wasn't really essential to the book. The FACT that Henry Ireland died was, but not who killed him.
  
  After her husband's death, Mrs. Ireland, who has suffered a mental breakdown, disappears. Where she is is quickly revealed to the reader. Why she is there is also. What happens to her there is readily available, if you can get through the rest.
  
  There IS a quantity of smaller characters and a robbery based on the Great Train Robbery, but the book does not have enough focus on one idea to make it a mystery.
  
  What IS a mystery is why the critics have been so excited about this book.
• 
  Nick

  Boy, did it take me a while to get through this one! I think that's what the author was going for. He clearly wanted this to be a Dickensian novel, complete with the cast of thousands, flowery language, and intertwining plots. The only problem is that he isn't Dickens and we're not living in the 19th century reading this serially. The story is interesting enough to make you want to keep reading, and his command of the Victorian language and landscape is masterful. But the characters aren't as engaging as they could be, and throughout the language and setting almost get in the way of telling the story.
• 
  Jenni

  The book is, principally, well-written and the author has put lots of effort into creating a "real" Victorian atmosphere. However, there were too many uninteresting characters and the story sort of went nowhere, and the various plot-lines were connected only vaguely. I'm quite sure that was the author's intention, but while I appreciated the excellent writing, the book didn't live up to my expectations. And though it is not the author's fault, it irritated me to notice that it somehow seems the person who wrote the text on the book cover hadn't even read it, as the text gives a totally wrong impression of the story.
• 
  Rachel Jones

  very densely plotted - many characters and storylines to keep track of. unfortunately, i felt like my favorite storyline (about the 'kept' woman) was sort of dropped and left barely resolved.
• 
  Zoella

  Oh, please, no, don't make me try to read this again...
• 
  Kailey (Luminous Libro)

  Bored out of my skull. I couldn't finish it. Hated the writing style. Boring characters, and no plot to speak of b/c it was soooooo slow.
• 
  Bev

  This book did very little for me and (full confession) I did not read every word because there were SO many of them and none of the ones I did read were interesting to me at all. The characters did not draw me in. I didn't much care who killed Henry Ireland or what happened to his mad wife or Mr. Dixey. And there were too many other characters that kept popping in and out to keep track of. And SO many threads and secondary stories. And they were supposed to all come together--but they never seemed to. As someone else mentioned...if there is a real ending to this story it's very well hidden because I couldn't find it. But I did skim enough that I feel justified counting it for various challenges. Unrated because I did not read every single word and don't think I can fairly give a rating.
• 
  Peter

  I thoroughly enjoyed this Victorian pastiche imbued with the language, the mores, the sights and the sounds of 1863-66 England. It's ostensibly a mystery of two deaths mentioned at the start, but more a series of character studies centred on creepy old James Dixey and the mad young widowed relative he keeps in his decaying Norfolk mansion, as well as some of his servants and Mr. Pardew, the first Great Train Robber. There are various other individuals in interesting situations and locations (including a compelling chapter in a snow-bound Yukon) all described in the style of various authors. A great read!
• 
  Marilyn

  I agree with many of the reviews: plodding language, taking forever to move the story along, myriads of characters! I usually love Victorian set novels. I really enjoyed Rebecca and The Woman In White which we’re nothing like this. I’m about half way through actually but will stick with it.
• 
  Joy Murphy

  This book never took hold and became painful to read, because it’s boring. Avoid.
• 
  BookBec

  Reading this was more work than pleasure for the first three parts, but I rather enjoyed Parts 4 & 5.
• 
  David Hesson

  Excellent premise. Didn’t live up to it