Best kept is a family portrait stretching over three generations. January 1945: The narrator's mother is born on the way the hospital, and carried the rest of the way, new-born, on horseback by her grandfather.

Best kept is also a story of illness. The mother, who entered the world so dramatically, has polio. She wears leg braces as a child. She needs a cane and crutches her whole life. She needs her daughter's hand at her back as they climb a hill. «Why does your mother walk with a cane?» a friend asks the narrator when they are still kids. The question confounds the narrator: Is that something to wonder at? Mum always walks with a cane. That's how it is. The mother isn't less in her child's eyes because of it. And so, Best kept becomes a novel about otherness and strength.

Everyone starts, everyone keeps going and everyone ends. This we know. This is how it is. But how do we best keep ourselves, and others?