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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780061146084
ISBN number: 0061146080
Label: HarperCollins
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 480
Printing Date: May 01, 2007
Publishing house: HarperCollins
Release Date: May 08, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 298084
Studio: HarperCollins
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Product Description:
Madness, greed, love, obsession, Machiavellian plotting, and a great train robbery, in a captivating Victorian mystery about the extreme and curious things men do to get—and keep—what they want
August 1863. Henry Ireland, a failed landowner, dies unexpectedly in a riding accident, leaving a highly strung young widow. Not far away lives Ireland's friend James Dixey, a celebrated naturalist who collects strange trophies—a stuffed bear, a pet mouse, and a wolf that he keeps caged in the grounds of his decaying house, lost in the fog on the edge of the fens.
The poachers, Dewar and Dunbar, with their cargo of pilfered eggs; Esther the observant kitchen maid, pining to be reunited with her vanished admirer; the ancient lawyer Mr. Crabbe, made careless by snobbery; John Carstairs, in search of his cousin, the elusive widow; an enigmatic debt-collector, busily plotting an audacious robbery; various lowlife henchmen; a beady-eyed country curate who sees more than he should; and Captain McTurk of Scotland Yard, patiently investigating the circumstances of Mr. Ireland's death and many other things besides—all are drawn into a net of intrigue with wide and sinister implications.
Ranging from the loch-sides of Scotland to the slums of Clerkenwell, from the gentlemen's clubs of St. James's to the Yukon wilds, Kept is a gorgeously intricate novel about the urge to possess, at once a gripping investigation of some of the secret chambers of the human heart and a dazzling reinvention of Victorian life and passions.
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Rated by buyers 
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Like another reviewer, I find it difficult to decide whether or not I truly enjoyed this book. Its scholarship was obvious (though either Mr. Taylour or his editor - preferably both - should learn the difference between "further" and "farther") but so much so that one wonders whether Mr. Taylour wrote it as "A Victorian Mystery" (not that there was any mystery in it) or purely as a challenge to himself, or an exercise in writing. Well done, with more than enough plots and counter-plots, all leading up to a somewhat disappointing ending which just seemed to drift away to nothingness.
Rated by buyers 
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It's hard for me to decide how much I really liked this book. I can say I appreciate it - it's well written, well researched, I liked the little technique of the style shifting according to the character (there are portions that are 3rd person omniscient that are narrated with "I", which give a nice ominous touch). The plot and construct are compelling, and I'm a sucker for a clever construct.
I had problems however tracking all the different storylines and characters. There was always the sense that they would tie together at the end but sometimes it was hard to stay engaged.
The central storyline is the mystery surrounding a young widow, Mrs. Ireland - her whereabouts, her mental state, her *large inheritance*... - but there are several substantial subplots that seem to take over the story entirely at points and that's where I think the novel starts to come undone. You start to invest in one storyline, and then you abruptly jump to another, and you start to forget who's who and fail to recognize when they pop up in a different storyline...
The numerous related subplots aren't my problem, it's just that sometimes you're slogging through them just because you trust they'll all come together into a wonderful picture by the end. The different subplots vary in quality too -- I really enjoyed a couple but the rest were not that interesting. And at the end, the payoff just didn't seem the effort of reading through all the subplots and keeping track of the characters.
But as difficult as this novel could get, I always felt compelled to come back and keep working through it. There's something to be said for that. Never did I just feel like giving up on the whole thing (ehem, Glass Books of the Dream Eaters--)
If you enjoyed this book, or at least the concept of it, you'll probably like Fingersmith (Sarah Waters), which has one of the best twists I've ever read in a novel, and not just as a gimmicky ending; The Observations (Jane Harris), which for me was an expansion of my favorite subplot in Kept, the servant one; and The Crimson Petal and the White (Michael Farber), The Ghost Writer (John Harwood) and Possession (A.S. Byatt) which all do an excellent job with the whole "multiple storylines coming together in a cool way at the end" trick.
Rated by buyers 
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Joining the ever-widening ranks of contemporary authors of Victorian sensation novels, D.J. Taylour might seem to be ideally primed to write a novel to join company with Charles Palliser's THE QUINCUNX and THE UNBURIED and Sarah Waters's FINGERSMITH. besides being the author of a highly respected biography of W. M. Thackeray, Taylour is himself the author of several novels. Yet if he is to write a really first-rate Victorian sensation novel he has not done so yet. KEPT, for all its fine evocation of uncanny atmosphere (which is in some ways the very first requirement of a good Gothic novel), particularly in the fine scenes set at desolate Easton Hall where a madwoman is in the attic and a wolf loose on the properties, Taylour is not quite so fine at delineating character or tying together his multiple plotlines. There's a mad widow whose story echoes that of Isabella Thackeray; a crazed and ruthless naturalist who is her neighbor; a naive if not wholly guileless lady's maid; a proud and arrogant lawyer; and a whole series of cutthroats and villains, several of whom are planning what will be known one day (according to actual history) as the Great Train Robbery. As if all that weren't enough, Taylour names several supernumerary characters after famous characters from Victorian novels (such as one Miss Marjoribanks, named after the eponymous Margaret Oliphant comic novel), and refers to locations from other Victorian classics (such as Hiram's Hospital). At times his narrator echoes Thackeray's unmistakable tones as the gossipy showman of Vanity Fair; at other times he clearly seems to be aping later Dickens. It's all a bit much. Taylour works so hard to impress us with his skills at creating a pastiche that he neglects the very first tasks of any true Victorian sensation novelist: to keep his audience engaged with a suspenseful plot and with vivid characters.
Rated by buyers -
Though billed as a mystery, British novelist and biographer ("Orwell," "Thackeray") Taylor's atmospheric and literary tale of death, madness, love (well, lust, at least) and skullduggery is more of a classic Victorian gothic melodrama than a mystery.
Although the two subject corpses roughly define the boundaries of the narrative, the murderers - if there are any - are not of burning importance. The reader will be more curious about Isabel Ireland, widow of the very first corpse, Mr. Henry Ireland, and ward of the second, an eccentric naturalist and recluse, Mr. James Dixey. Isabel, you see, is mad. Or is she?
The only thing we know for sure is that she's locked up in Dixey's manor house and has not been seen in public since her husband's death in a riding accident three years earlier, in 1863.
The novel opens with a mysterious scene in which two men journey into the Scottish Highlands on a cold April evening and plunge into frigid water to steal two rare bird eggs. Dunbar is the intrepid eggman, Dewar is his luckless assistant. Though both deliver the prize to Dixey, whose study is filled with stuffed birds and beasts and displays of rare eggs, we hardly see Dunbar again (the more interesting of the pair) while Dewar becomes a hapless pawn in a plot not of his making.
The novel moves leisurely from scene to scene and character to character, using letters, diary entries, newspaper accounts and criminal depositions as well as anecdotal narrative to tell its wonderfully convoluted story.
Through an array of characters, Taylour explores the gradients of Victorian class and character. There's Esther, Dixey's new servant girl, curious about the locked room upstairs and willing to take a chance on a handsome footman and Mr. Crabbe, Henry Ireland's buttoned-up lawyer whose secrets leave him open to the machinations of clever, unscrupulous, daring Mr. Pardew, who schemes a big score for himself and any confederates left alive.
There's Mr. Dixey's neighbor clergyman who pines for a better place and a wife to go with it, and the efficient and talented Capt. McTurk, a London police detective with a prodigious memory and tenacity to match. And there are numerous supporting characters, from a witty cameo by George Eliot to the sleazy ministrations of Pardew's assistant, Mr. Grace.
What there is not is a main character to latch on to. McTurk might have served, but we don't meet him in person until two thirds of the way through and while there is a narrator, it is an omniscient, authorial voice that makes only a few appearances. While this lack is not a small thing, the novel is so well written, so exuberant and so wonderfully complex, most readers will love it anyway and fans of 19th century literature will relish Taylor's many allusions and homages, acknowledged in a detailed appendix of chapter notes.
Rated by buyers -
After I finished graduate school, I took a lengthy vacation from the works of Charles Dickens, until last year's "Masterpiece Theatre" production of BLEAK HOUSE inspired me to revisit that master of the 19th-century novel. When I picked up D. J. Taylor's new historical mystery KEPT, I was immediately reminded of Dickens's work, with its rich atmosphere, vividly drawn characters and glimpses into the lives of Victorian England's high and mighty and low and seedy alike.
Likewise, Taylor's book turns as if on a dime in virtually every chapter, focusing on kitchen maids and heiresses, police investigators and lawyers, even small-time criminals and various other unsavory sorts. The main plot of this richly multi-plotted novel centers on Isabel Ireland, a young widow whose husband Henry died suddenly following a horseriding accident (or perhaps the mysterious circumstances are slightly more sinister...). Rumored to be mad, hidden away in sealed-off rooms of the ominous, eccentric collector Mr. Dixey, Isabel is unreachable by virtually everyone, even her most determined relatives. But, as readers glean from the accounts of dozens of interrelated characters, Isabel --- and her late husband --- are far from forgotten.
The reader's efforts in piecing together the evidence of a variety of crimes --- from murder to train robbery (modeled on the Great Train Robbery of 1855) --- are paralleled by those of police captain McTurk, a new breed of law enforcement officer described as both "thorough" and "single-minded." And he'd have to be, too, to wade through the letters, memos, diary entries and narratives that combine to form the text. That's not to say that readers have to pursue the mystery doggedly themselves; in fact, the best way to read KEPT is to just get lost in its world, to allow oneself to become absorbed in these Victorian intrigues and romances, betrayals and secrets --- the mystery will take care of itself.
Like many other modern novels based on Victorian characters and themes, KEPT offers today's readers subtle commentaries on Victorian mores even as it delves deeply into its environment. Numerous miscommunications, failed attempts to locate relations (particularly Dixey and Isabel) and unanswered letters underscore the contrast between our own ultra-connected lifestyle and that of the Victorians. Accounts of Isabel's madness, delivered primarily by her husband, doctor and (male) guardian (Isabel herself, when she finally gets to narrate, is genuinely confused about her own sanity), will resonate with anyone who has read THE MADWOMAN IN THE ATTIC or similar feminist critiques.
Even the snide commentaries of the egg poachers who stock Dixey's taxidermy collections offer understated remarks on Victorian practices: "'What we're after, there's few enough of them to be had now....But think of it! These might be the last of them in all England. That's worth a ten pound note if ever a thing was.'"
Undeniably viewed through a modern lens, KEPT nevertheless manages to preserve the authentic flavor of the best Victorian novels.
It's probably no wonder that D. J. Taylour has been able to construct such a well-developed, convincing Victorian world. In addition to novels, his previous works include biographies of George Orwell and William Makepeace Thackeray, as well as critical studies of more recent English literature. The obviously well-read author's acknowledgments mention "the direct influence of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Gissing, Jack London, Mary Mann, Henry Mayhew, George Moore, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, W. M. Thackeray and Anthony Trollope." Of course, readers of these influential authors will be the biggest fans of KEPT, and will delight in finding the allusions --- some obvious, some hardly so --- that litter Taylor's prose.
Well-informed by his literary precedents and creative enough to make this novel uniquely his own, Taylour has created a dense, ambitious Victorian novel that is sure to satisfy fans of those 19th-century masters.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
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