Product Description

`breathtaking debut novel...her prose is spare and elegant'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2857 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk

About the Author ~ Sadie Jones
Sadie Jones was born in London. She grew up in a creative environment: her father is the Jamaican poet and screenwriter Evan Jones, and her mother was an actress. As her friends took up their various university places, Sadie worked in a variety of jobs. After travelling, she settled in London and spent several years as a screenwriter, before writing her first novel, The Outcast. Sadie is married and has two children.

Exclusive Amazon.co.uk Interview with Sadie Jones

What is The Outcast about?

The Outcast is about a boy called Lewis - his childhood and adolescence – as he grows up in the stultifying world of the home counties in the late forties and fifties. It is an everyday tale of drunkenness, violence and a fair amount of sex, set amongst the well-brought-up professional classes. It is also a love story.

What inspired you to write it?

The idea of a boy coming out of prison and trying to fit into a community that is itself corrupt was the first thing that came to me. I wanted to write an Oedipal story, with iconic characters, about what the nature of what it is to belong, and injustice. I set it in the fifties because I have always been very attracted to the books and films of that time.

Who are your literary influences?

It’s difficult to think in terms of being influenced, because when you write you try to find your own voice and forget those of other writers, but I must in some way be a product of books I’ve loved. My favourite writers are Hemingway, Capote, Salinger, McEwan and Dostoyevsky.

If you could recommend just one "must-read book" to anyone, what would it be and why?

It would be The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoyevsky, because it is a book that tells a riveting story and is profoundly insightful about human nature. Dostoyevsky has an undeserved reputation of being sort of turgid, but nothing could be further from the truth of this book. He relishes the events he discloses and has no prissiness – he gets in the mud with his characters.

What top tips do you have for anyone looking to write their first book?

It’s very hard; I only know what works for me, which is planning, structure and hard work. I have found that whenever I write thinking I’ll sort some lingering doubt out later, I generally run into trouble. If you can’t answer every single question about your story, then people will be able to tell. Also, try not to get too tied up in whether or not it’s any good, or what will happen to it when it’s finished – all of that can be paralysing.

Reviews for The Outcast

An assured voice, a riveting story, and an odd, wrenchingly sympathetic protagonist. I would never have imagined this was a first novel. Lionel Shriver

In the tradition of ATONEMENT and REMAINS OF THE DAY but in her own singularly arresting voice, Sadie Jones conjures up the straight-laced, church-going, secretly abusive middle class of 1950s England. The Outcast is a passionate and deeply suspenseful novel about what happens to those who break the rules, and what happens to those who keep them. I loved reading this wonderful debut. Margot Livesey

I much admired The Outcast. Sadie Jones tells her story using minute details to convey the apparent ordinariness of her characters' lives. But from the choreography of these walking, smiling, drinking people, from their emotional repression and their children's deprivation, she conjures an atmosphere of menace and suspense that erupts into violence and tragedy. It is an impressive debut for this talented new novelist. Michael Holroyd

Sadie Jones is an important new voice. She writes in beautiful prose of terrible events, demonstrating how love denied brings brutal consequences. She conjures the repressive social climate of the 1950s with awful accuracy, and explores the hearts and minds of young people with forensic skill. A great stylist and fine storyteller. Joan Bakewell

One of Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime reads for February, Jones’ story is imbued with brooding atmosphere and drama. Understated and elegantly narrated with attention to period detail, this is a gripping love story with a twist. If you liked Atonement by Ian McEwan, you’ll love this. Harper’s Bazaar (Feb issue)

A wonderfully assured first novel. Guardian

The prose is elegant and spare, but the story it reveals is raw and explosive… Devastatingly good. Daily Mail

The Outcast grips from page one… Jones has captured the stultifying morals and mores of Fifties English middle-class life with satisfying accuracy. Publishing News

Set in post WWII suburban London, this superb debut novel charts the downward spiral and tortured redemption of a young man shattered by loss. The war is over, and Lewis Aldridge is getting used to having his father, Gilbert, back in the house. Things hum along splendidly until Lewis’s mother drowns, casting the 10-year-old into deep isolation…Jones’s prose is fluid, and Lewis’s suffering comes across as achingly real. Publishers Weekly

A confident, suspenseful and affecting first novel, delivered in cool, precise, distinctive prose. Kirkus

Good Housekeeping
Best Debut Novel

Review
'Jones successfully evokes the stifling, repressive atmosphere of an English village during a hot summer after the second World War'

Customer Reviews

Disturbing, but draws you in!
Lewis arrives back from prison in 1957 now at the age of 19 and of course that has me wondering what he went to prison for. Time then reverts back to a much younger Lewis and follows his childhood tales which include an extremely traumatic event, which changes Lewis to a quiet, withdrawn little boy that it appears nobody really understands.

The book moves forward in time and we find out why Lewis was in prison. Lewis appears lost with himself and with the opposite sex, but is drawn to differing girls/women that may be able to fill a small part of his needs. Lewis' family and their neighbours are very much central to the story and they all seem to carry so many demons within them. Kit is a neighbouring young girl that has always been drawn to Lewis and she feels she understands him the most, but he tends to cast her aside as he feels she is not for him. The community in general takes against Lewis for various reasons and Lewis feels in some way he must fight back after hurting himself physically and mentally for so long.

I found this a very difficult book to describe in terms of what happens as I didn't want to give away any spoilers, as I feel it's a book that just needs to be read and absorbed. One cannot help feel so sorry for Lewis and want to shake everybody around him so that they can see what he is going through. However everyone in the book does appear to be suffering in various ways. I feel that this was an exceptionally well written novel that is dark, disturbing, distressing and depressing, but at the same time a most wonderful, colourful, absorbing read. As I was reading it I felt things were going from bad to worse and it seemed as if Lewis was doomed to fail in anything he tried to achieve. For me it was a book that had me desperate to find out what happened next and was very difficult to put down. I was absolutely amazed to find that this was the author's debut book, will definitely look out for the next.

Read this book - I don't believe you'll be disappointed.

Please read and make your own mind up!
I finished this book a few weeks ago, thoroughly enjoyed it and have passed on to a friend to read. Have been trying to work out why there are such a range of reviews on this site, and I personally am baffled by the views of the 1 and 2 star reviewers. I can only summise that variety is the spice of life and makes the world go round.
The plot of this story is excellent and there are many themes for the reader to explore on the journey through the book, some subtle and some more pronounced. I personally think that readers will enjoy the book more if they have some "life experience" e.g. if they have been through adversity, or parenthood, or difficult family relations, or experienced loss, or abuse, or financial problems. That said, the open minded reader would also be able to experience a huge amount of empathy and emotional connection with or withour their own related experiences.
It is hard to explain what I mean without giving away some of the plot, but this book is exploring nature/nurture and what makes people "good" or bad" in their lives : how can we as human beings help one another and offer support. What does the absence of support and understanding do to a person and what can the provision of love and trust do to turn around a person's life. This book really made me think and reflect, and there are many ways in which the themes are applicable to my own life and to each and every reader.
As for the way the book is written - I loved the prose and found it cleverly constructed. The simplicity of the writing holds the key here. The writer is trying to portray an insight into individual standpoints and some areas of the book read like a stream of consciousness.
In summary, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and experienced many changes of emotion and it provoked my thoughts and invited me to question my own views on life - always a good sign for any book.
I don't want to speculate on the reasons for the bad reviews; for me personally this was a fabulous read and I will be recommending it to friends. I suggest you buy and then make your own mind up what camp you fall in!

Oppressive, claustrophobic and OUTSTANDING!
It is difficult to know where to start when it comes to describing this book.

The story is set over a roughly ten year period and involves Lewis Aldridge who in the prologue is seen coming home after a spell in prison, we don't know why he has been there or what circumstances drove him to commit a crime but this just merely sets the scene for the next three parts of the book, as we discover why Lewis has been incarcerated and trapped not just in prison but in his short life.

Lewis background is filled in and we gradually come to know and meet all the characters. Gilbert Lewis' oppressive father who seems to think that by not talking about events means you will not have to deal with them. Elizabeth, the mother of Lewis, who hides in alcohol and who adores him and spoils him up until the day she tragically loses her life. Lewis grief sets off changes, event after event which affects everyone. Alice, the stepmother who is not stereotypical stepmother; evil, but weak in many ways, and I felt less empathy for this character, who made me want to scream, there is so much she could have done to help Lewis and stop things spiralling but she hid in her room, in alcohol and behind her new husband.

The Carmichaels are the major neighbouring family who the Aldridge's socialise with in their stuffy manner of class and system in the 1950s. Their youngest daughter Kit, is the other trapped character within this book, who is trying to escape the fact that she has fallen in love with the local bad boy `Lewis' but also her violent father, Dicky who seems to have control over everyone, either by force and brutality or what and whom he knows. Justice will prevail in the end for the reader, and a relief it was.

Lewis is a rather lost soul, after his mother has died and his actions are always referred back to the tragic event. He is trapped within the constraints of his mind, never discussing what has happened and uses self harm to release the pain. Trapped in prison, trapped amongst his father's regime and the neighbours as they expect a certain sort of behaviour, trapped by a local girl for fun to name but a few.

This book beautifully deals with some fairly brutal issues and places them into a society which is somewhat different to nowadays. The descriptions of the violence are somewhat shocking but this is only to emphasise the problems that these people have to deal. I really felt quite claustrophobic while reading the whole book and felt just as trapped as Lewis and Kit did.

There is not an Epilogue to this story, you do not know what happens after these major events, you just hope that justice prevails and those who live to be loved remain so and can find peace in their own minds.

Do not let any of this put you off the book it is a fantastic story which keeps you on the edge of your seat from page one right until the end. A great debut novel.