A classily written crime novel that is also an atmospheric evocation of a bygone era.

Darkly beautiful... The Kept is a rare blend of brutality and empathy, emotion and close observation. I thought at times of Cormac McCarthy's work and of the novels of David Vann. At other times it brought to mind Stef Penney's The Tenderness Of Wolves and Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain. But there's something wonderfully distinctive about The Kept... A literary page-turner of the highest calibre by a writer of serious talent.

Mysterious and compelling... James Scott has written a riveting and memorable debut novel.

With its vivid sense of time and place, lyrical writing, and complex questions of what constitutes a family, The Kept is an outstanding debut by a bright new voice in fiction.

Winter and discontent... Scott is the master of mood... Haunting'

Dark and mysterious… A novel whose daring is found in its bleakness… The plot unfolds with a weighty languor reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy… Sparse, elegant… haunting.

Reads with the stark clarity of a Johnny Cash song

Feels like the shell of a Cormac McCarthy novel filled with the intricate yearning and familial strife of a Lorca play… A gripping combination I don’t think we’re likely to find anywhere else.

Dark and brutal… Never lets up until the climactic scene, in prose that’s brooding and intense right up until the final paragraph… So packed with incident and character, and so fluidly paced, that it’s brought vividly to life by Scott’s meticulous control

Scott is [a] master storyteller in this outstanding debut

A thrilling adventure and a literary triumph

A deeply moving, disconcerting novel… Scott manages something quite difficult here, balancing both terror and tenderness with apparent ease. By the end of The Kept, you’ll be convinced that he can do just about anything.

Atmospheric and memorable, suffused with dread and suspense right up to the last page.

Artisan-like control... As breathless as it is inevitable

The author of last year's biggest selling debut The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry returns with a very different but equally captivating novel... This is a heartbreaking story, full of compassion, that unfolds gently but relentlessly against the backdrop of the suburban '70s. Perfect confirms [Rachel Joyce] as a major new voice.

Moving, insightful and satirical

Joyce’s last novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry was a wonderful story of an older man walking across England to say goodbye to a dying friend. It was spoken of fondly in book clubs and in reviews and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In Perfect, Joyce has created an excellent follow up.

A cleverly-plotted tale, it is moving yet unsentimental. Sure to delight Joyce fans who made The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry a best-seller.

With Perfect, Joyce wrings another rewarding tale out of the little tragedies of life

Rachel Joyce's first novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, won both commercial success and wide critical acclaim (it was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize). She may just repeat the trick with Perfect, a mixture of comedy and drama in much the same vein... this is a novel with the capacity to both surprise and charm.

Out of the smallest, most delicate building blocks, Rachel Joyce gradually builds a towering sense of menace. She understands people, in all their intricacy and vulnerability, in a way few writers do. Perfect is a poignant and powerful book, rich with empathy and charged with beautiful, atmospheric writing.

Intriguing and suspenseful... Joyce, showing the same talent for adroit plot development seen in the bestselling The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, brings both narrative strands together in a shocking, redemptive denouement.

[Joyce's] sympathetically realised characters are people living on the edge, whether of loneliness, poverty or mental illness, and despite its underlying sadness, the book ends with the presage of hope.

A moving and original novel... it confirms [Joyce] as one of the most interesting voices in British fiction

A rewarding, multi-layered novel with empathy for disturbed mental states and, towards the end, a clever fast-forwarding 30 years.

Rachel Joyce's new novel is simply Perfect.

[Joyce] triumphantly returns with PERFECT…As Joyce probes the souls of Diane, Byron, and Jim, she reveals – slowly and deliberately, as if peeling back a delicate onion skin – the connection between the two stories, creating a poignant, searching tale.”

In alternating chapters, these two stories set 40 years apart frame Joyce’s exquisitely played novel of tragedy and mental illness and the kind of wrenching courage unique to those who suffer from the latter and yet battle to overcome it. As in her brilliant debut, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Joyce stuns with her beautifully realized characters and the unexpected convergence of her two tales.

Perfect touches on class, mental illness, and the ways a psyche is formed or broken. It has the tenor of a horror film, and yet at the end, in some kind of contortionist trick, the narrative unfolds into an unexpected burst of redemption. Buy It.

Joyce flings “Perfect’s” characters into chaotic situations fraught with misgivings and confusion ... Diana’s descent into terror is provocative enough to carry this story, but Joyce complements it with a contemporary one about an equally fragile man named Jim who has spent most of his life in a facility for the mentally ill. His connection to Diana will surprise many readers as Joyce spins this equally compelling subplot toward its shocking revelations and conclusion.

Better than The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry... touching [and] eccentric.

Ambitious, dark and honest