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    The Outcast: A Novel
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    The Outcast: A Novel
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    The Outcast: A Novel
    Ebook421 pages5 hours

    The Outcast: A Novel

    By Sadie Jones

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A mesmerizing portrait of 1950s hypocrisy and unexpected love, from a powerful new voice

    It is 1957, and Lewis Aldridge, straight out of prison, is journeying back to his home in Waterford, a suburban town outside London. He is nineteen years old, and his return will have dramatic consequences not just for his family, but for the whole community.

    A decade earlier, his father's homecoming has a very different effect. The war is over and Gilbert has been demobilized. He reverts easily to suburban life—cocktails at six-thirty, church on Sundays—but his wife and young son resist the stuffy routine. Lewis and his mother escape to the woods for picnics, just as they did in wartime days. Nobody is surprised that Gilbert's wife counters convention, but they are all shocked when, after one of their jaunts, Lewis comes back without her.

    Not far away, Kit Carmichael keeps watch. She has always understood more than most, not least from what she is dealt by her own father's hand. Lewis's grief and burgeoning rage are all too plain, and Kit makes a private vow to help. But in her attempts to set them both free, she fails to foresee the painful and horrifying secrets that must first be forced into the open.

    In this brilliant debut, Sadie Jones tells the story of a boy who refuses to accept the polite lies of a tightly knit community that rejects love in favor of appearances. Written with nail-biting suspense and cinematic pacing, The Outcast is an emotionally powerful evocation of postwar provincial English society and a remarkably uplifting testament to the redemptive powers of love and understanding.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061863622
    Unavailable
    The Outcast: A Novel
    Author

    Sadie Jones

    Sadie Jones is the author of five novels, including The Outcast, winner of the Costa First Novel Award in Great Britain and a finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Los Angeles TimesBook Prize/Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; the enchanting, hard-hitting novel set on the island of Cyprus during the British occupation, Small Wars; her most successful, bestselling novel The Uninvited Guests, beloved of Ann Patchett and Jackie Winspear, among other; the romantic novel set in London's glamorous theatre world, Fallout; and most recently, the highly acclaimed, bestselling novel, The Snakes. Sadie Jones lives in London.  

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    Reviews for The Outcast

    4/5

    245 ratings58 reviews

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    • 1/5
      A game of two halves. First half really good. Then the second part is a real stinker. Suddenly you think how could Lewis emerge after 2 years in prison without really having been changed by it? And then the awful sex scenes.
    • 4/5
      An enjoyable read.
    • 4/5
      A very good story but very grim indeed. The main character Lewis is a young boy who loses his affectionate mother when she drowns while they are out swimming. His father is very stuffy and cold and the boy withdraws into himself. He feels isolated and becomes known to the town as the "difficult" boy and no one cuts him any slack at all. The novel begins with a Prologue where Lewis is age 19 and returning home from two years of prison. It's a book that is tough to read because you can tell Lewis is a really sweet kid who is just crying out for affection, only to be rebuffed time and again. Well worth the read.
    • 4/5
      This is Sadie Jones's debut novel and I came to it after reading her other books and enjoying them enormously. Set in the stifling world of an English village in the 1950s, the story follows Lewis Aldridge from when he first encounters his father after the war and his troubled life after the death of his mother. Being motherless and then having a young stepmother unprepared to deal with a grieving boy, sets him apart from the rest of his peers and his increasingly destructive behavior get him sent to prison for a few years, but it's his unwelcome return that sets in motion events that change the accepted order of the village. Jones knows what she's doing, and even her first novel feels self-assured. Her characters are fully developed and the story is well-plotted. It's a melodramatic tale, full of the intense and immediate feelings of adolescence and young adulthood.
    • 3/5
      The rational part of me knows I should not have liked this book. It is one of those weepy stories, designed to manipulate, taking pleasure in destroying a main character. Sort of the literary equivalent of torture porn. Ok, not really. I grew to like the main character and had to watch him put through the ringer, falling into one tragic situation after another. Never getting a break. Did I mention for most of the book, he’s a child?

      I should have liked it. It was almost too Hallmark Hall of Fame/Lifetime Original Movie, but it was very well written and despite the doom and gloom, very compelling. I’m a sucker for British WW2 stories and this is sort of the antithesis of the danger and glamour of the books, the calm after the storm. Changed people had to go and pick up the pieces of their former lives, and their difficulty adjusting to ordinary life impacts their friends and families.
    • 4/5
      Outcast was an AWESOME book!!!!! The "outcastS" are Brook and Stromfur. Find out yourself why! Although this book was great, the battle was not as exciting as I hoped.
    • 3/5
      Not the best one in the series; didn't have a lot going on in the book. It wasn't as interesting as the other books.
    • 5/5
      Jaypaw, the apprentice of a medicine cat, is blind, thoughh he a chosen cat of a prophecy. In this book, Jaypaw and his two siblings set out to help a Tribe in the mountains.While at the mountains, the three cats (and the other cats that were chosen in THE NEW PROPHECY; Tawnypelt, Brambleclaw, Crowfeather, and additional Stormfur, and Squirrelflight. Brook is Stormfur's mate, so she also comes along.) thrive to help the Tribe. The tribe cats are starving because some rogues are stealing their pray. They learned by watching the prey-hunters catch their food, and then learned them, and copied them to eat their food. Because of all this commotion, the clan cats have to teach them some fighting moves, and help them take what is theirs. The clan cats teach them how to fight, defend, and mark their borders.After all that training, they are finally able to fend those horrible rogues off, and the clan cats finally head for home.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful and poignant, tragic and hopeful, this book held all the elements I treasure in a dramatic, time period piece. I attached deeply to the characters, their strengths, weaknesses, character flaws and their unique perspectilves and experiences. The ending left me wanting to leap with joy, cry for the pain yet to come and yet, aching for more. I do hope there is a follow up novel to this truly touching, very REALISTIC, story. I would love to see where everybody lands.
    • 5/5
      Tribe cats come to ask the Clans for help. Jaypaw "sees" Brook's memories and knows he, Lionpaw, and Hollypaw must go on the quest to the mountains. As Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight gather the cats from the other Clans who went on the first journey, the apprentices ask to go. As the group goes to the mountains, they meet old friends along the way and try to help the best they can. Jaypaw knows the truth but hasn't revealed it yet.I am so into these books. This series, by far, is the best. I could not put this book down. I want to know about the ancient tribes that were in the Clan area as well as the Tribe area. I also want to know why Jaypaw is not letting the others know about his dreams and his ability to walk in others' dreams. I still don't know the answer to that. I want to know about the prophecy Jaypaw received but hasn't revealed to the others who will be affected by the prophecy. And why does Lionpaw have such a strong connection to Tigerstar and Hawkfrost? So many questions, so few answers as of now. I cannot wait to read the next book in The Power of Three series.
    • 3/5
      A great book, as are all the Warriors Saga books.
    • 2/5
      This novel definitely falls in the category of Suburban Secrets Stripped Bare! Interesting story but overall the writing was weak and uneven. Specifically found her shifting of POV ineffective and, at times, downright clumsy. It seemed somehow rushed. It was pretty ambitious (ala McCarthy, Ishiguro, McEwan), so I stuck with it. But by the end the characters had become flat and colorless.

      This is a first novel, so I may check her out later down the road.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book packs a wallop and is definitely not for those who like soft, rosy stories.It is a book that will haunt me for awhile...a long while.As stated in the opening chapter, two people went into the woods for a picnic and only one returned!When young Lewis witnesses the drowning of his mother, his life spins way out of control while his father and the upper crust social strata of 1940-1950's England encourages and foments denial.When his father rapidly marries and Lewis' feelings are pushed further and further underground, he acts out in ways that harm himself and those around him.This is a graphic novel -- not in the sense of cartoon like pictures -- but in the reality of stark images written at the hand of a very adept and powerfully skilled author.Struggling to write a review about the awesome power of this book, I'll simply say it is a very compelling look at the phoniness of society. It is an incredible story of a young man struggling to find meaning in a very crazy environment.While those around him are quite comfortable in their accouterments, lavish lifestyles, dinner parties and social status, their out-of- reality behaviors literally drive Lewis crazy!While the adults emotionally and physically abuse their children behind closed doors, they quite comfortably drive their Rolls Royce cars out into the guilded land of la la land.Highly recommended!
    • 3/5
      First of all, the publishers have chosen a terrible cover for the Vintage version of this book. It hints at a wartime romance, hankies being waved on train platforms, and generally suggests a book that I would have no interest in reading.As it was for book group, I read it anyway, and was pleasantly surprised that it is actually about a young boy who loses his mother in a traumatic event, and how the people around him fail to help him cope with his emotions thereafter.Set in three periods of Lewis's life, the book examines his relationships with his mother, and afterwards his stepmother, as well as his childhood friends and neighbours, none of whom seem able to understand how he has been affected by the loss. The Home Counties setting of large homes with cooks, housekeepers and chauffeurs was completely alien to me however. I also wasn't convinced by his self-harming (did this happen in the 1950s? I don't know, but I didn't start to hear about it until the 1990s), and it reminded me a little of We Need To Talk About Kevin, but overall this is an engaging read and well-written.
    • 4/5
      Lewis Aldridge is a young boy in 1950s rural England when he witnesses his mother’s drowning. Within weeks, his distant father, Gilbert, has emptied their family home of her belongings; and within months, he is remarried to a much younger woman, Alice. The accident is not spoken about, and Lewis’s grief is never acknowledged. “The silence around her memory became brittle and dangerous and neither dared break it.” (69) Not surprisingly, Lewis is unable to cope. His grief manifests itself first as defiant behaviour; but as time goes on, the unresolved childhood trauma will take him to much darker places. Gilbert’s response to his son is cold, punishing aloofness; and Alice seeks solace in alcoholism. Finally, Lewis is completely lost:“I feel like I’m falling away from everything, like the world’s just far away from me. And dark. And I’m dark too. Just recently I don’t know if I can get back.” (233)Kit Carmichael instinctively knows what Lewis needs and seeks to help him. But Kit is a young girl and herself the victim of a cruel and abusive father. Dicky Carmichael, also Gilbert’s boss, detests Lewis and forbids Kit’s association with him. Lewis’ descent accelerates, aided in no small measure by the deliberate ignorance of 1950s society as concerned the “private” matters of mental illness, alcoholism, and domestic violence. Jones’ debut novel is impressive; her spare and to-the-point style suits her purpose well. The Outcast is a compelling read, the enduring gift of which, for me, is the reminder of the residual damage which results from a society’s chosen ignorance.“If one didn’t mention a thing afterwards, it was as if it hadn’t happened.” (75)
    • 5/5
      I had never heard of this book until it was selected as a book group read. The plaudits on the back cover suggested it was written in a similar style to ‘Atonement’ so, having loved that book, I was keen to read this.The premiseUnder the neat façade of the church-going, lunch-attending 1950s middle classes, rural life is full of familial abuse and misery. Lewis Aldridge, returning from jail at the tender age of nineteen, is frustrated by the polite hypocrisies of this world. A social outcast who is convinced he is broken, his actions quickly grow wild. Kit Carmichael, four years younger, has always adored Lewis. However, in her desire to help him, she will expose other secrets to public view…The openingAfter a prologue describing Lewis’ difficult return from prison, the narrative joins Lewis at age seven when his father is demobbed. This is a critical point in Lewis’ life and for years afterwards he defines his life into two sections: before and after his father returned home. Gilbert brings a ‘stuffiness’ with him that Lewis and his mother resist, but tragedy soon divides Lewis’ life into another before-and-after.The prologue sets the style for the whole novel: thoughtful, painful, somehow separate. What could be simply a clumsy cliffhanger – why was Lewis in prison? Is he dangerous? – is actually an effective introduction to Lewis’ psyche. Given the events of this chapter and the length of time Lewis was in jail I felt that it was fairly easy to guess what he had done anyway, so it doesn’t create intense suspense. Instead, the focus is on how uneasy Lewis feels about his place in this world.My thoughtsI found the premise of the novel interesting, although it is certainly not a book I would have selected myself, mostly because I’m so busy trying to keep up with the work of authors I already know I like! This isn’t a new topic (secretly abusive middle class families) but it is handled very well in this book.I found the 1950’s setting was neatly evoked through small details and was convincing without the need for layers of description. In fact, Jones uses description sparingly throughout: it is always purposeful, which I liked, and gives the narrative coherence rather than being a diversion.This is Jones’ first novel but she has been a screenwriter for fifteen years and this novel has clearly benefitted from her background: it ‘flows’ cleanly from beginning to end. Characters are swiftly delineated, minor details gain significance, and the reader experiences the point of view of several characters, including Lewis, Kit and some rather less sympathetic figures. These changes are managed very smoothly and the actual reading experience is very easy.When the tragedy occurred early on, I found Lewis’ responses utterly convincing. This worked well to create a bond between the reader and the character which allowed me to develop sympathy for Lewis that sustained my involvement in the rest of the novel. For a book like this to work you have to care deeply about the central protagonist. Fortunately, Jones has handled the narrative in such a way that it is impossible not to feel for Lewis.This does mean that his father, Gilbert, comes across at points as being almost inhuman in his harshness and some critics have suggested that Jones misses a trick by failing to explain his cold behaviour. I would argue that his behaviour is adequately explained by the era and his time spent at war. Besides which, developing more sympathy for Gilbert would surely have reduced feeling for Alice (his new, young wife) and Lewis.Perhaps a more significant problem is the portrayal of Dicky Carmichael (Kit’s father), who also lacks an explicit justification for his rather more brutal approach. However, he is essentially a bully who is enabled by the social mores of the period. Once again, this lack of development of his character means that we view him from Kit’s perspective and it enhances our sympathy for her and our sense of horror at the hypocrisy in this society. I do not see these omissions as flaws in Jones’ writing; rather I think they are sensible decisions which focus a reader’s sympathy on the children, who gradually become a symbol of hope.Both fathers become more distasteful as the novel develops and their strictures (Gilbert) and behaviour (Dicky) become more explicitly dictatorial and abusive. Jones’ gradual development of their characters means that neither becomes simply a caricature and their actions are shocking without shaking the reader out of the world Jones has created.A warningWithout wishing to reveal too much of the plot, I feel readers should be warned that a self-harm theme develops in this book. While scenes depicting harm are not gratuitous, they may well make some readers feel very uncomfortable. Personally, I did find these scenes quite difficult to read and I had to put the book down and leave it for a few minutes sometimes before continuing. Obviously this will not affect all readers, but I felt that some might appreciate being made aware of this aspect of the book.ConclusionsThis is easy to read in the sense that the narrative flows very smoothly. It can be quite difficult to read in the sense that the protagonist is in a lot of emotional pain throughout much of the book. I found this to be a quietly compelling read with a suitable ending. (I would have quite liked an epilogue, but the ending is fitting and could be viewed as powerful / rather melodramatic.) The main characters are very sympathetic (but, crucially, not spineless) and you really care about how their lives will develop. The claustrophobia of village life is effectively evoked, as is the enormous power our families have over us. Definitely worth reading and I will be on the lookout for ‘Small Wars’, her second novel.
    • 4/5
      When The Outcast opens it’s 1957 and 19 year old Lewis Aldridge has just been released from two years in prison. He is returning home, the outskirts of London, to his father and stepmother, neither of whom wants him. The rest of the book is the haunting story of Lewis’ life, before and after this point, as the author weaves the story by moving back and forth in time, developing a narrative with tension and suspense that had me holding my breath and furiously turning pages.Lewis’ story is one of repression and loneliness. As a ten-year-old, he watches helplessly as his mother drowns in a river close to their home and without her to anchor him, he is lost. His father, Gilbert, marries a much younger woman, only a few short months later. Lewis struggles to fit in and control his anger, but he is a child in need of extensive counseling, and none is offered him.In the meantime, his father’s influential boss, Dicky Carmichael, is revealed as an abusive bully who is systematically beating his younger daughter, Kit. Lewis and Kit are unwitting partners in trying to escape their individual nightmare existences. And Lewis’ stepmother, Alice, has turned into a public drunk who is making sexual advances on him. It’s hard for a guy to keep his head up under these circumstances. Lewis does try, but the cards are stacked against him. My heart went out to him. Sadie Jones paints such a sympathetic character, flaws and all that I found myself wanting desperately for him to succeed. In the end, we’re left with hope, Lewis is left with hope. He has a future that could never have been predicted early on in the narrative. Sadie Jones produced a knock-out debut novel. Her spare prose, told with unnerving realism make for a riveting read that reveals the strait-laced life of the fifties wasn’t all it appeared to be. Very highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      I finished The Outcast by Sadie Jones, shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2008. It is a very good book, a very perceptive study of a boy rejected by one self centered member of his village after another, ganged up on by bullies thinking everything that is wrong in life is his fault, and being assured that that is true. His counterpart is a young girl from a wealthy family but with the same familial, though not societal rejection. The results of evil are demonstrated but not the cause. Why should Lewis's father reject him from the age of 7 onward, did war deaden his feelings or does the man have none? Why does Dicky Carmichael abuse only part of his family, and why does the family condone it? Why do people get so much more enjoyment from expressing hatred and conformity than love, individuality and humanity? Is it original sin? Can only religion answer these questions? Not in this book, religion comes off as equally self absorbed with the rest of the village. Sadie Jones doesn't discuss cause just effects. She does that well, but it's a mighty oppressive book.
    • 4/5
      This debut novel opens in 1957 London, as Lewis Aldridge, a 19 year old from the northern suburb of Waterford, is released from prison after serving a two year sentence. No one comes to greet him, and with no practical skills and nowhere to go, he chooses to return to the small town that has been distrustful of him since his mother's disappearance a decade earlier. Secrets abound in Waterford, where social appearances are far more important than genuine love and respect, and Lewis' reputation as a pariah and his continued troubles at home and in the community cause him to become progressively unrattled.Lewis is befriended by Kit Carmichael, a younger girl who has always admired him. However, her father is Lewis' father's employer, a respected but abusive man who despises Lewis and threatens Kit and his older daughter, Tamsin, to avoid the wayward boy. As tensions build, Kit becomes the only person who can communicate with Lewis, whose own father adds to his increasingly unstable behavior.The Outcast was a brilliant page turner for the first 2/3 of the book, with its realistic though disturbing portrayal of the lives and secrets in a small town community in postwar England, and the characters of Lewis, Kit and others were compelling. Unfortunately, the last 1/3 of the novel doesn't meet the same standard of excellence. However, this was still a very good novel, and one that I would strongly recommend.
    • 4/5
      This novel won the Costa Award for a first novel and was short-listed for the 2008 Orange Prize, deservedly so. The first 2/3 of the novel is brilliant.This is a coming of age story, not my favourite genre, but I couldn’t put it down and finished it in 2 days. Somehow I managed to help my children with their homework while completely absorbed in 1950′s Britain, where post-war repression, denial, and dissociation are a practised art in the village where Lewis Aldridge grows up.The novel begins with Lewis coming out of prison for an unknown crime, clearly not a terribly serious one as he has served two years. The story then begins with Lewis as a little boy, going with his mother to London to fetch his father, newly demobilized after serving four years in the second World War. The question is how does this Lewis, sweet, likable, and open hearted become a nineteen year old ex-con drunk.On one level, the answer has to do with an accident, an unexpected tragedy, which no one is allowed to properly acknowledge, least of all the little boy who witnessed it. But it is also an exploration of denial and its cost, which Jones depicts with exquisite accuracy and insight. The setting for this exploration is the perfect choice, ie the post-war world of shut up, put on a cheery face and assemble the stuff of middle class life, where emotion is just more stuff to be displayed in the quantity and quality that is socially acceptable.Real emotion is stuffed away, and, like the war, weighs the characters down more and more while they pretend to travel light. Consequently, ordinary decent people cannot grieve, but can and do drink (a lot). Nor can they properly love, because to do so means to open up their heavy hearts. They wish it were different but not if it means giving up denial. And so things go from bad to worse. This is the real tragedy.Lewis as a child and then an adolescent acts out the sickness of the whole village. The very open-heartedness that made him so likable as a little boy makes him unable to fully shut away his grief and act his part the way others do.Contrasting with Lewis, whose painful self-injury and outward bursts of rage are visible, the head honcho in the village, a successful business owner with the perfect family, is secretly and pleasurably abusive. The collusion of his family in hiding it is another consequence of denial, which Jones delicately portrays. The other outcast in the novel is Kit Carmichael, a child in this family.Like Lewis she has absorbed some of her family and village culture, and yet, again like him, her nature does not permit full assimilation into it. While Kit believes that silent endurance is brave, thus colluding in her family’s secrecy, she is outspoken in other respects, telling the truth for and about Lewis, incurring her family’s disdain and wrath.Both Kit and Lewis are fully realized characters, Lewis perhaps more so than Kit, but Kit is endearing in her faithful love and her outspokenness. The perspectives and thoughts of the minor characters also come through strong and clear, and Jones doesn’t hesitate to get into the mind of every sinful and failing person in the novel and to dig right into their humanness.For me the last part of the book doesn’t quite live up to the brilliance of the rest. Like David Guterson in Snow Falling on Cedars, Jones takes her protagonist deeper and deeper into tragedy, only to pull a happy ending out of a hat. I wanted a happy ending, of course, but I wasn’t convinced that it was real.She did such a good job of showing the villagers’ devotion to denial, that I would have expected that even when faced with the truth, they would find a way to turn it upside down as they had before. I also found it hard to believe that alcoholism and self-injury could be cured and true love find its way cleared just by discovering that a man one thought was respectable was actually an asshole, and a girl one thought lived an ideal life actually has suffered badly.However maybe at nineteen, someone can believe it’s so, and the story ends there, rather than going on to years of therapy, probably a failed marriage and relapses, but hopefully no more jail time and a second, better marriage.Despite that, this is really a wonderful novel. Her command of language is excellent, her voice original. Honestly, I’m relieved that the last bit wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped because otherwise I would be completely intimidated by the skill of this first novel from a writer in her early 30′s. I’m looking forward to what she does next, and I’d love to hear what other people who’ve read this book think of it.
    • 5/5
      This book got off to a bad start with me. It hooks you into the story by showing what happens way later on. In this case we see nineteen year old Lewis Aldridge being released from prison in the 1950s. Then we go right back in time to see the events of his childhood starting with when his dad returns from fighting the second world war. I don't like the 'flash forward' device in fiction and rarely think it adds to the story, and I didn't feel it was needed here. This tale is all about how an ordinary kid gets bashed about by events and ends up living a not quite so ordinary life. I think the title gives enough knowledge to the reader that everything isn't going to go swimmingly for Lewis and the prologue is unneccesary. I was pleased that the story went on past the events of the prologue.Apart from that I really enjoyed the story and found the characters very well drawn. Children turn into adults in a realistic coherent manner and the class boundaries of village life ring true. There are people in the story guilty of much worse crimes than Lewis and I found all the family interactions, both within families and between families completely believable. On the whole it was a good book, I think it's Sadie Jones' first novel, and I'll be looking out for more.
    • 5/5
      One of my reading resolutions this year was to review every book that I read… this has been fun, rewarding, made me think about and find merit in each book I disliked, fully explore the reasons for loving the ones that astonished me. Once in a while, I’ve found that I’ve closed a book thinking ‘no review I can write can possibly explain what is so wonderful about this book’, and truly struggled to articulate the things that made it sing to me, as one of the children in this book fails to tell his mother about the moment of a skateboard turning in an arc under an older boy’s feet, flashing it’s illustrated under-side, before landing neatly and rolling on.But the character with the scarred hands, who says to his daughter if nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable? has the perfect argument for attempting to do this book some sort of justice. The author has provoked the reader with detailed observation of an unwinding morning, by shining light on the ordinary until it glows, building suspense out of un-punctuated conversation, character out of straying cricket-balls and sketch pads, and sadness out of absent characters. I might not have his writing chops, but I can try and say that this book is special, that the writing is beautiful, even poetic but also hard-working, that nothing is wasted and everything is, indeed, remarkable.A street, in summer, slowly awakens and unfolds. A catastrophe awaits the residents, as they go about their day, the details and moments of their lives are examined as they move towards it, as the author tempts the reader with shadowy possibilities, and distracts us with the perfectly ordinary, by turns. The present-day narrator, caught up in the stir of her newly discovered pregnancy, remembers back to it, to the boy from number eighteen, to whom she is now connected through his brother, who took off, running, as though he knew exactly what to do.McGregor tackles this story more like an artist creating an image by filling in the negative space, than a conventional novelist. He tells us everything we do not need to know, revisiting groups and houses, over and over, until we realise that these people, these moments, are the story, no more or less than the moment that the book is building towards. There’s a hint of Something Happened by Joseph Heller in the structure, except that I don’t remember that book making me hold my breath over a telephone conversation, or a clay figure, or a couple stealing a moment to have sex as the house empties of its extended family.I had the suspicion from time to time that we wouldn’t be let in on the lynch-pin event, but McGregor is not cheap, and, anyway, one important message here is pay attention to everything that happens. He doesn't stop, and the implacable beauty with which he continues to describe the day is both jarring and appropriate at the same time. He is, however, clever enough to leave one vital question unanswered, that ‘what happens next?’ that every good book leaves instils in every invested reader.
    • 4/5
      Interesting and well written book about an individual who is narrating her story over the past few months, and details of an incident which changed her life written from the perspective of the people who lived on one street during that one day. Difficult to put into words, but a good read all the same.
    • 5/5
      An unexpected gift.I loved this novel, the story of a haunted boy who is forgotten by his own father. He abandons the fight to remain socially acceptable until one of his friends from his infancy comes to his rescue. And unknowingly, of her own.I'll be following this author.
    • 3/5
      This book scores incredibly highly on the modern literature gimmickry checklist. Let's see now......Not a speech mark in the place...CHECKHardly any of the characters named....CHECKHanging paragraphs....hmmm that's innovative....CHECKSpeech reported warts and all so it takes three readings of each sentence to make out what is being said ...CHECKMost of the commas and a good few full-stops left out....CHECKOn that basis it should be a bestseller! The trouble is it's a tough read, made tougher by the fact that the event central to the 'story' is withheld until the very end, stretching the reader's capacity to care about the nameless characters and their formless angst.To give the author his due, he can write very good poetic prose, and dreams up some interesting scenarios. The trouble is, it's all a bit Turner Prize. As though someone painted a brilliant picture, but instead of just framing it and letting people enjoy it, he scribbled all over it so it was impossible to see what was originally there.
    • 3/5
      The outcast of the title is a young man who returns home to his small, smug English village after serving two years in prison for arson. Poor Lewis Aldridge watches his mother drown when he is 10, and then lives under his father's silent blame and near-hatred. As he enters his teens, he starts cutting himself, drinking, and acting out violently. Nothing much changes when he is released from prison, and his only solace comes from his relationship with two girls next door, one of whom is routinely abused by her father.Nice, right? This book was very readable, but so dark and depressing that even I started disliking it, and I usually love dark and depressing. The somewhat hopeful ending redeemed it a little, so I won't say I disliked the book in its entirety. One of the blurbs evoked Atonement. It's an easy comparison because of the setting, but while Atonement is complex and breathtakingly realistic in depicting the psychology of its characters, The Outcast is a little too pat and by-the-numbers. Still, a bleakly interesting read.
    • 5/5
      When he was only 10 years old, Lewis Aldridge witnessed a terrible tragedy. Unable to express his feelings and shunned by his father, Lewis grew up a troubled young man. The Outcast opens with a prologue set in 1957, when 19-year-old Lewis is returning home after two years in prison. Sadie Jones then takes her readers back in time to recount Lewis' childhood and the events that led him to commit a crime.Lewis' father Gilbert served in World War II, and when he returned home in 1945 Lewis was only 7. He didn't really know his father at all, and struggled with his intrusion into the family and his close relationship with his mother. After the tragedy, Lewis withdrew into himself. The other children in his village didn't know how to respond to him, and the adults were disturbed by his silence. In his teens, Lewis expressed his intense grief and self-loathing in increasingly harmful ways, eventually leading to imprisonment.As Lewis' life fell apart, he couldn't help but compare himself with the Carmichaels, a model family in his village. Dicky Carmichael was Gilbert's boss; he and his wife Claire host an annual New Year's party and weekly Sunday lunches, all with plenty of cocktails to go around. Dicky and Claire's older daughter Tamsin is a beautiful young woman who knows how to use her sexuality; their younger daughter Kit is precocious and cares deeply for Lewis. But the Carmichaels have dark secrets of their own, which remain carefully concealed even as the Aldridge family's troubles are exposed to public viewing.When Lewis is released from prison, he is thrust back into village society and gossip, and struggles to find his way. He gravitates toward the Carmichael girls, even as their parents reject him because of his criminal record. Tensions escalate, particularly after Lewis discovers the Carmichael secret, and all hell breaks loose.I read this book in two days, because I just couldn't put it down. Lewis is a sympathetic character, and I was pulling for him throughout. He had been through so much, and had so little support. It was easy to see how he became so troubled, and I nearly cried whenever he began to go off the rails, or struggled with his place in society. The Outcast is intense, dramatic, and highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      This was an amazingly good book! It said on the back that it was a bit grim (or words to that effect) and - don't get me wrong - it was unbelievably relentlessly grim! Yet I kept the faith that there would be some kind of relief and I wasn't disappointed. It brought me to tears several times. She's an incredible writer. Oof!
    • 5/5
      Lewis Aldridge was an outcast – shunned by his father who reminded him too much of his deceased wife, bewildered by his young stepmother and largely ignored by his peers in his home village. Alone and hurt, Lewis became a man torn between the hatred he felt for being cast out and the desperation to feel accepted. In her debut novel, The Outcast, Sadie Jones exposed parts of Lewis’s soul who were hard to read about, but like a bad car accident, you keep looking, hoping to learn more.Lewis will be a character that I won’t soon forget. Most of the time, he was a character worthy of sympathy – a terrible victim of cirumstance that was acting out against society. Then, Lewis would show uglier colors and deeper flaws. He did unforgiveable things. And his bad reputation made him the target for any accusation – from rape to theft – whether he committed the crimes or not.As I finished The Outcast, I realized that Lewis was not the only “outcast” in this book. His parents were sad and lost too. His friends’ parents, the Carmichaels, were unscrupable. When Lewis made this realization, he felt even more broken. The only good in the world, for him, was 15-year-old Kit Carmichael, who was the constant recipient of her father’s physical abuse. He was determined to help her, despite the personal costs.It’s hard to say one could “enjoy” this book. The characters, though real, were tragic. Their destinies did not seem optimistic. But the ending left you with a glimmer of hope that the strength of the human spirit could endure all.
    • 4/5
      The Outcast is a riveting story taking place in 1950's England. A mother dies and her son struggles with his grief and guilt. This is an amazing first novel from Ms Jones I look forward to more from this gifted young novelist.