The Kept
James Scott, 2014
HarperCollins
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062236739
Summary
In the winter of 1897, Elspeth Howell treks across miles of snow and ice to the isolated farmstead in upstate New York where she and her husband have raised their five children. Her midwife's salary is tucked into the toes of her boots, and her pack is full of gifts for her family. But as she crests the final hill, and sees her darkened house and a smokeless chimney, immediately she knows that an unthinkable crime has destroyed the life she so carefully built.
Her lone comfort is her twelve-year-old son, Caleb, who joins her in mourning the tragedy and planning its reprisal. Their long journey leads them to a rough-hewn lake town, defined by the violence both of its landscape and of its inhabitants. There Caleb is forced into a brutal adulthood, as he slowly discovers truths about his family he never suspected, and Elspeth must confront the terrible urges and unceasing temptations that have haunted her for years. Throughout it all, the love between mother and son serves as the only shield against a merciless world.
A scorching portrait of guilt and lost innocence, atonement and retribution, resilience and sacrifice, pregnant obsession and primal adolescence, The Kept is told with deep compassion and startling originality, and introduces James Scott as a major new literary voice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1977-78
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Middlebury College; M.F.A.,
Emerson College
• Currently—lives near Springfield, Massacusetts
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. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
If not for the author's sparse, elegant prose, twanged with puritanical patois, The Kept might be simply agonizing. Instead, it is a haunting narrative, salvaged by precise language that never overreaches or oversells. Although there are moments when Mr. Scott might have gone lighter on excruciating details—a finger probing a bullet wound, the radiating agony of a cracked fingernail, a body brutally crushed under a block of ice—for the most part, his restraint is an excellent foil for the moral and physical desolation of his story and characters.
Ivy Pochoda - New York Times Book Review
(Starred review.) Scott’s accomplished debut—a dark, brooding tale set in upstate New York in the late 19th century—follows a compulsive midwife who must deal with the tragic consequences of her actions in order to form a family.... [A] work of historical fiction that is both atmospheric and memorable, suffused with dread and suspense right up to the last page.
Publishers Weekly
This taut revenge tale, as gritty as any western, is also an unusual coming-of-age story and compelling saga of twisted secrets…Scott writes with sustained intensity and strong descriptive powers.
Booklist
(Starred review.) The crimes of a benighted woman spark horrific blowback; in its wake, this wrenching first novel from the Massachusetts-based Scott tracks two lost souls in the New York hinterland of the late 19th century.... Scott is both compassionate moralist and master storyteller in this outstanding debut.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Kept:
1. How would you describe Elspeth Howell? In the book's very first line, we learn that she has committed sins. How egregious are those sins? Are you able to muster sympathy for Elspeth? Why or why not? To what extent does she change, if at all, by the novel's end?
2. Motherhood is a major concern of the The Kept. How is it explored in the novel? What kind of mother is Elspeth?
3. Caleb is bent on avenging his family's death. What makes Caleb so dangerous in his obsession? Would an older, more mature Caleb be more judicious? Why doesn't Elspeth restrain him?
4. Describe Jorah, husband to Elspeth and father to Caleb. What was his effect on both mother and son? How has his death changed each of them and their relationship with one another?
5. What role does religious faith play in this novel? Why do mother and son reject religion and come, instead, to see themselves as outcasts and sinners? Are they?
6. Talk about the Elm Inn. What happens there that dissuades Caleb from pursuing his crusade? What does he come to understand?
7. To what extent does destiny pervade this novel? Do the characters have any choice in shaping their lives...or are they completely at the whim of a rather harsh fate?
8. What kind of world—upstate New York in the late 19th century—does James Scott present in The Kept?
9. Have you read Cormac McCarthy's The Road. If so, are there parallels between the two books? Where do they differ?
10. Talk about the racial and gender prejudices exposed in The Kept and the way those prejudices underpin the novel's violence.
11. How do the revelations exposed later in the novel change your understanding of the book's opening scene?
12. Is this book simply too grim and brutal to read? Or are there redeeming qualities—hope, for instance—in the story?
13. Does the novel end satisfactorily? Do you envision a different, or better, ending?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)