Jane's struggle to cope is a journey of self-discovery and independence...a wistful and haunting period piece

This was the first grown-up book I read apart from the dirty bits in The Carpet Baggers and every 14-year-old should be made to read it. It tackles the lot; loneliness, race, sex and growing up. I never read books twice but I feel like tracking this one down again.

Unflinching in its boarding-house detail, and strikingly modern in its fury at the "social conditioning" that made its heroine an outcast; it shocked and sold.

Written in pre-Pill days when motherhood really was a fate worse than death, the shame and tension in Reid Bank's ground-breaking novel may seem incomprehensible to today's sexually active youngsters

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