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The Outcast

3.53 of 5 stars 3.53 · rating details · 3,239 ratings · 483 reviews

1957, and Lewis Aldridge is travelling back to his home in the South of England. He is straight out of jail and nineteen years old. His return will trigger the implosion not just of his family, but of a whole community.

A decade earlier, his father's homecoming casts a different shape. The war is over and Gilbert has recently been demobbed. He reverts easily to suburban lif...more

Hardcover, 352 pages

Published February 7th 2008 by Chatto & Windus (first published 2008)

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The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal] by Zoë Heller

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14th out of 59 books — 9 voters

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97th out of 149 books — 34 voters

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Aug 29, 2008 Elizabeth added it · review of another edition Recommends it for: Sarah Hilary, if she wants a good rant

Recommended to Elizabeth by: Sarah Carstairs

Shelves: chocolate-club

The only thing that sustained me through the 440 some pages of this piece of literary TRIPE was the thought of the chance to REAM it in a review. I swear that if my book group makes me read ONE MORE MEDIOCRE ORANGE PRIZE NOMINATION I will have to slit my wrists. I shoulda guessed… it does have a sticker on the cover touting it as a "Richard and Judy Summer Read." (If you want a very depressing summer read.)

This book is a sort of an Atonement wanna-be… Plot, characters, setting all seem to be lif...more The only thing that sustained me through the 440 some pages of this piece of literary TRIPE was the thought of the chance to REAM it in a review. I swear that if my book group makes me read ONE MORE MEDIOCRE ORANGE PRIZE NOMINATION I will have to slit my wrists. I shoulda guessed… it does have a sticker on the cover touting it as a "Richard and Judy Summer Read." (If you want a very depressing summer read.)

This book is a sort of an Atonement wanna-be… Plot, characters, setting all seem to be lifted straight from Atonement, although it takes place 20 years later and the prose would have to be considered semi-literate twaddle even if I weren't comparing it to Ian McEwan's masterful writing. However, in contrast with Atonement, The Outcast has a bing-bong slap-up happy ending, which came as a surprise to me, since I spent most of the book wishing that the miserable main character would get on with it and drown himself. If Joan Bakewell (whoever she is) thinks this is "beautiful prose" and The Times thinks it's "beautifully written," all I can say is that our literary standards have now sunk so low that any few words strung together with a period at the end count as beautiful prose. The prose is DIRE. A sampling:

—"He had a sudden memory of Jeanie holding him, and the sweetness of the feeling, and had shame about it." He "had shame about it" only if English was his second language, which it clearly isn't, since it's hammered home that almost every character in the book is born and bred (very highly bred) in Sussex. You don't HAVE SHAME. You ARE or FEEL ashamed.

—"He felt the hopes that he'd had, and prison, and his father, and that he was lost." No, he didn't FEEL his FATHER.

—"…she had always thought that part of winning her battle was looking after herself, being someone who still looked after themselves." No, this character DOESN'T have a split personality. It's just that the author has failed to coordinate the agreement of the gender and number of some pretty straightforward pronouns, and NEITHER DID HER EDITOR. Did she HAVE an editor???

—"Lewis didn't think that was probably true." I don't really know what's wrong with this… It's not grammatically wrong, it's just sloppy and imprecise and awkward. It means "Lewis thought that probably wasn't true" or "Lewis didn't think that was true."

The WHOLE BOOK is like this. And the plot was depressing and the characters were all wretched, too.

O Chocolate Club: If you are reading this review: PLEASE don't make me read any more books from Tesco's.
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Jan 10, 2013 Alison rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. There was a point about three quarters through this sodden, posh "Rebel Without a Cause" that I started laughing. The book wasn't meant to be funny(in fact, I'd be hard pressed to imagine a more humorless novel I've read this year). In fact, Sadie Jones puts her attractive, well-heeled young characters through a catalog of After-School Special/Lifetime movie horrors so unrelentingly grisly that a medieval martyr would shake her head in "Surely you jest" disbelief.

There is a great deal of good l...more

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Aug 18, 2008 Victoria rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Every now and again you come across a book that really appeals to you. After reading the blurb on the back, looking at the cover (judge a book by its cover? Me? Erm… yes, quite often) and reading a few well-chosen reviews, I decided that The Outcast was definitely going to be a book I would enjoy. It ticked all the boxes: Lots of praise from literary sources? Yep. Setting some time in the British past? Uh-huh. Dysfunctional families? Hell, yeah. So why, upon finishing, did I award it only two st...more Every now and again you come across a book that really appeals to you. After reading the blurb on the back, looking at the cover (judge a book by its cover? Me? Erm… yes, quite often) and reading a few well-chosen reviews, I decided that The Outcast was definitely going to be a book I would enjoy. It ticked all the boxes: Lots of praise from literary sources? Yep. Setting some time in the British past? Uh-huh. Dysfunctional families? Hell, yeah. So why, upon finishing, did I award it only two stars?

Simple really: I didn’t like it.

Writing style was undoubtedly brilliant, sweeping and emotive (and earned this debut novelist one of those two stars). Trouble was, for me - and I’m aware that I am hugely in the minority here - it was hard to care about the story and the characters because of the massive, oppressive depression that dominated every single page.

Don’t get me wrong, I can take it when the literary going gets heavy. But I need a little light relief, because there’s always a balance, right? But I just found every element of this story suffused with such a glut of horrific emotional destruction and oppression - and some truly horrible, horrible characters - that I had to battle my way through to the ending. (Which itself was a vaguely pleasant surprise, and earned the other star).

I would recommend this to anyone who ‘enjoys’ – for want of a better word – all those misery memoirs that are currently dominating bookstores nationwide. You know the ones; a ‘hand-writing’ font used for the title (which is usually something along the lines of ‘please don’t daddy’ or something equally harrowing) and plain white covers with a picture of a tearful child. Oops, there I go judging books by their covers again. But if you can wallow in others’ misery and not be dragged down yourself, then this well-written book is for you.

Oh, and a quick edit to say that I have seen several reviews that liken the main character to Holden Caulfield. I am not a Catcher In The Rye fan either, so maybe there's something in that.(less)

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Jun 15, 2008 Susan Burpee added it

I though The Outcast was a tremendous book. The writing style was lean and evocative at the same time. You'd never know it was a first novel. I found the characters believable and came to really care what happened to them even as they sometimes exasperated me. The plot dragged a tiny bit in the middle but persisting is worth the effort. I read the last few chapters while on the exercise bike and cried the whole time. Moving but definitely not sappy or sentimental.
Lewis, the main character is ki...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Emily Crowe rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, audio-book

I won this book in a giveaway. Well, technically I won $10 from Book Depository and this is what I chose, as I wanted an audio book for my daily commute. So far, so good, though I'm not quite finished with the first disc yet. If I'd know at the time I selected it that it was abridged, I probably would have passed on it, but so far the abridgement feels like it's a successful one. Bonus: Dan Stevens is the reader, so now when I'm in my car I feel like I'm being serenaded by the voice of Matthew f...more

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Apr 16, 2008 Jeanne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Lewis Aldridge has been released after 2 years in prison. It is 1957, and he is coming home. But for some reason, nobody's really keen on seeing Lewis again. Why?

Rewind to 1945. His father has just returned from the war and somewhat dismayed to see that young Lewis has become quite attached to his mother. For his part, Lewis barely remembers his father. A few years later, in a tragic accident, Lewis's drunken mother drowns in the river, and nothing is ever the same again. For anyone.

For Lewis, l...more

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Apr 24, 2008 Jenny rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was an interesting book for me...I quickly got into it and devoured the first 100 pages and then all of a sudden the narrative just seemed to come to a halt for me. I put the book down and didn't really have any motivation to pick it up again for several days. Then I found out the book was due back to the library and I couldn't renew it because it was on hold for someone else. So I decided I was going to keep it and try to finish as quickly as possible. After another 10 or 15 slow pages thi...more

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Oct 13, 2008 Fredsky rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm rating this a 3.7. Why can't we rate decimally?

It's a good book. Depressing, most reviews say, and I disagree. Depressing would have been if Lewis STAYed home! Or if he'd worked for Dicky FOREVER! Sadie Jones is a fine writer. I'm sorry I can't reach for her next book tomorrow. Some scenes were a bit over-the-top for me, mostly Lewis going berserk at home. I think Ms. Jones depicted these family lives perfectly, as well as the village cruelty. She did avoid life in Brixton, however. As I sup...more

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Aug 02, 2011 JChipol added it · review of another edition

This book begins with the release of a young man, Lewis Aldridge, from Brixton prison in 1957. He is the privileged son of a Surrey stockbroker: but how has he come to be a blight on his family and on his community? Even the maid will not be alone in a room with him.

Sadie Jones paints a sad picture of a hypocritical surburban post-war society in her debut novel, ‘The Outcast’. The themes covered within it are self-harm, domestic violence, loss, alcoholism and family breakdowns; heavy themes inde...more This book begins with the release of a young man, Lewis Aldridge, from Brixton prison in 1957. He is the privileged son of a Surrey stockbroker: but how has he come to be a blight on his family and on his community? Even the maid will not be alone in a room with him.

Sadie Jones paints a sad picture of a hypocritical surburban post-war society in her debut novel, ‘The Outcast’. The themes covered within it are self-harm, domestic violence, loss, alcoholism and family breakdowns; heavy themes indeed, and yet subtly and sensitively written.

The story primarily revolves around Lewis; we follow his life to discover how he became such an ‘outcast’ in his society, and then how he lives his life beyond being released from prison. Lewis Aldridge is only seven in 1945 when his father Gilbert returns to the village of Waterford to burst the bubble of the boy's idyllic relationship with his spirited mother. As a father, Gilbert seems unusually cold, distant, even for his well-bred, boarding school upbringing.

Perhaps Lewis's biggest problem is living in the Fifties. He calls his father "sir", receives no counselling when his mother dies in a tragic accident, and is generally expected to behave like a small adult throughout his childhood. Lewis grows more unhappy, more solitary, and when he is 17, violence explodes. After a period away, Lewis sees he no longer belongs.

The book was an excellent read and, after reading this book, I was left asking - who is the outcast? Is it the obvious main character (as ,of course, he is indeed one)? But, only one ‘outcast’ amongst many.

In the same neighbourhood, young Kit Carmichael has her own problems; as a young child, she becomes aware of persistent violence in her home, and soon becomes a victim herself. This abuse makes Kit feel angry and powerless. Lewis is her hero. While it seems immediately obvious that Lewis is the outcast presented in the title of this novel, Kit is also an outcast.

Lewis’ step-mother realises that she is imprisoned within a stifling society in which she does not fit, and soon alcohol (like her predecessor’s alcoholism) soon becomes her crutch. Even Lewis’s father, Gilbert, finds himself biting his tongue and submitting when cruel boss insults him and his family within the polite society of tradition and protocol.

The psyche, and one’s upbringing, as Sigmund Freud knew, can be more of a prison than the bars in which Lewis eventually found himself in. The book questions the ‘prisons’ society can place on us and indeed makes us ‘outcasts’ if we don’t, or cannot, conform.

In Brixton prison, Lewis is convinced there is no place for him, that he is “wrecked.” But when he returns to Waterford and tries to resume his life, he comes to realize that “all of the people who managed in the world” are also “wrecked people,” that “everybody was in a broken, bad world that fitted them just right.”

This book is an excellent read and, with its large print and compelling storyline, is one which can be read within a few short hours. It asks many interesting questions of ‘polite society’; a society where, “the world exploded, but Sunday lunch would go ahead as normal”. Many of us, I think, can relate to that, to some degree.

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Feb 27, 2009 Djrmel rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, fiction, romance

If Ian McEwen had ever been a sixteen year old girl, this is the book he would have written. A young boy loses his mother, and no one around him has the tools or the heart to help him recover. Instead, they all have their own levels of disfunction to travel through - all except one, who fanfic readers will recognize as a Mary Sue of the highest calibre. That's not to say this isn't a good read, if you enjoy a pretty good gothic mixed with a heavy dose of romantic idealism. My complaint is that...more

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Jan 30, 2009 Diane rated it 4 of 5 stars

This story takes places in the 1950's in England, though much of the angst portrayed is just as common place today, no matter where you live.

We meet Lewis Aldridge at the beginning of the story, he is 19 years old and just out of prison for setting fire to a church. He is hoping for a new chance at life, a new beginning, but things are off to a rocky start with his father, right from the beginning.

The story then reverts back to Lewis' childhood. He is a happy though quiet child who enjoys his...more This story takes places in the 1950's in England, though much of the angst portrayed is just as common place today, no matter where you live.

We meet Lewis Aldridge at the beginning of the story, he is 19 years old and just out of prison for setting fire to a church. He is hoping for a new chance at life, a new beginning, but things are off to a rocky start with his father, right from the beginning.

The story then reverts back to Lewis' childhood. He is a happy though quiet child who enjoys his mother, Elizabeth's, company. Elizabeth is an outcast of sorts in that she tends to drink too much and is a free spirit. When her husband, Gilbert, returns from the war there is a shift in patterns at the house. They are expected to behave in a certain way and tend to him. It is obvious from the start that Gilbert is cold and distant from his son. When a tragic incident occurs and Lewis has to return home, without his mother, things get worse for Lewis and the strained relationship between father and son continues to deteriorate.

As time continues, Gilbert, the small community and even Lewis' new stepmother all consider him to be damaged. Lewis becomes even more aloof and begins to cut himself.

Kit Carmichael is the young daughter in an influential family. Her dad just happens to be Gilbert's boss as well. Kit has always liked Lewis and she wants to help him. She has her own problems to deal with in her family but she is always in Lewis' corner. Kit is actually somewhat of an outcast herself and does not agree with most of her family's observations.

When Lewis completes his stint in prison and does return home, he and Kit decide to change their situation and break free from their lives as they know it. They can no longer sit quietly and accept their roles in life.

This is a wonderfully written first novel. Its themes of war, alcoholism, emotional and physical isolation can be applied to today's world as well. No matter the time or place, the possibility of change and hope is always something to strive for. (less)

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Apr 07, 2013 Carolyn Mccargish rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: children-s-literature

The genre of the story "Outcast" is science fiction and fantasy.
A character named Lavender believes that the world around her is falling completely apart. Lavender is not accepted in her village and she feels alone and without friends. Lavender does not know her mother or where to find her , she does not even know if her mother is alive.
Suddenly, when a strange epidemic comes to her village , the people begin to die in the village from an unknown disease. Readers who are interested in science...more

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Mar 12, 2013 Melinda Seyler rated it 2 of 5 stars

Recommended to Melinda by: newleaph@gmail.com

The Outcast by Sadie Jones
This is the story of Lewis who is introduced as a small boy just after WW2. Lewis and his mother have been alone while his father was in the war. When Lewis' father returns, life changes. Lewis is an interloper. His father resents any time Lewis spends with his mother, calling it spoiling. The father is cold and totally unloving. Unfortunately, Lewis' mother drowns in a nearby river when he and she are alone one day and people begin to treat Lewis as if he had something...more

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Mar 10, 2013 V.J. rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'd been warned, "This is really sad!", so having shed tears over the last book I read, I decided to get my melancholy reading over and done with and get stuck into Sadie Jones' acclaimed novel.

Jones' writing is understated and she has a poetic lilt that imbues her characters with vitality and the Surrey woodlands with sensuous beauty without saturating the text with weighty descriptions.

In fact, despite my initial reservations, I found it a real character-driven page turner that reminded me of...more

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Oct 21, 2012 Jen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: miscellaneous-fiction, period-fiction, psychological

Set in a small village outside of London in the 1950s, this is a story about everyday people trying to cope with and hide their brokenness from everyone else. Lewis, our protagonist, witnesses the accidental death of his mother at 10 years old, and it understandably affects him deeply. But his wounds are left to fester when none of the adults in his life take any responsibility for giving him the emotional care he needs after such a traumatic incident. As he gets older, he turns to increasingly...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Esther rated it 3 of 5 stars

Her first book and it shows promise, but did rather concetina towards the end with too many incidents and events happening too quickly one after the one. The earlier parts where the pace is slower with more characterisation and reflection were better. Set in post war England, this is such a sad tale about a boy - Lewis - who suffers being apart from his father during the war and then his mother to whom he was very close drowns in the local river whilst swimming with Lewis. His distant father and...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Barb rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, library-books

WWII ends, and Lewis Aldridge’s father, Gilbert, returns home. The two get along until Lewis's mother drowns in his presence, casting the 10-year-old into deep isolation. Lewis is ignored by grief-stricken Gilbert, who remarries a year after the death, and Lewis's sadness festers during his adolescence until he breaks down and torches a church. After serving two years in prison, Lewis returns home seeking redemption and forgiveness, only to find himself ostracized. The town's most prominent fami...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Alice Keogh rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: other A-level students

Recommended to Alice by: reading list

I'm reading this as an A-level English Literature student and I understand why it was on my reading list. The prose style is superb and wonderfully evocative of the earth shattering emotions felt during grief and depression.

However, and it's a big however, I did not enjoy reading it. This story was a struggle to get through, a long laborious struggle which left me feeling drained and awfully upset. Every page is saturated with the anchor of deep depression and the suffocating repression of poor...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Linda Lipko rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 re marries and Lewis' feelings are pushe...more

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Apr 11, 2012 Eirin Orum rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was one of 27 that found its way to my home at a bookstore bargain sale. Most of them were children's books for my daughter, but around 10 of the books were for me, and I've been going through them very slowly. I've been really let down by most of the books, but this one actually made me want to be able to read more than a chapter or so just before falling asleep at night.

This is not a plot-driven book at all. The introduction makes it pretty clear what has happened and will happen, y...more

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Apr 06, 2012 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Beautiful, spare writing. The passage where Lewis's life is changed for ever (I will not give details as it would spoil the plot) is devastating and written with such pace and tension that had it been a film I would have been watching it from behind my fingers. The child's point of view (both Lewis's and Kit's) were very convincingly rendered. I loved the way Jones manages to convey the way a child's mind flicks in an instant from like to dislike, from curiosity to fear, from knowing something i...more

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Feb 03, 2012 Ian Mapp rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Sep 29, 2011 dubh rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Ein sehr trauriges, wenngleich auch wunderbares Buch!

Lewis Aldridge lernt seinen Vater erst mit 7 Jahren richtig kennen, als dieser aus dem II. Weltkrieg nach England zurückkehrt. Zu seiner Mutter allerdings hat er eine sehr liebevolle und starke Beziehung und so streift er als Kind oft mit ihr durch die Wälder nahe seines Zuhauses während sein Vater in London arbeitet. Eines Tages passiert ein Unglück: Lewis' Mutter ertrinkt unglücklich bei einem Badeausflug im Fluß - ihr 10jähriger Sohn ist de...more Ein sehr trauriges, wenngleich auch wunderbares Buch!

Lewis Aldridge lernt seinen Vater erst mit 7 Jahren richtig kennen, als dieser aus dem II. Weltkrieg nach England zurückkehrt. Zu seiner Mutter allerdings hat er eine sehr liebevolle und starke Beziehung und so streift er als Kind oft mit ihr durch die Wälder nahe seines Zuhauses während sein Vater in London arbeitet. Eines Tages passiert ein Unglück: Lewis' Mutter ertrinkt unglücklich bei einem Badeausflug im Fluß - ihr 10jähriger Sohn ist der einzige Zeuge.
Gilbert Aldridge bekommt ab diesem Tag keine Beziehung mehr zu seinem Sohn hin - er kann ihn noch nicht einmal mehr ansehen, soviel Ähnlickeit entdeckt er im Gesicht von Lewis mit seiner verstorbenen Frau. Und so präsentiert er dem Jungen recht schnell eine Stiefmutter, in der Hoffnung, alles könnte wieder geordete Bahnen finden. Doch Lewis entwickelt sich schnell zu einer Art "Problemkind" - völlig auf sich allein gestellt, wie er seit dem Tod seiner Mutter ist.
Als ein zweites Unglück geschieht, wird Lewis festgenommen und muss sogar für zwei Jahre ins Gefängnis... Mit seiner Entlassung beginnt das Buch - die Vergangenheit wird in Rückblenden erzählt.

"Der Außenseiter" ist über weite Strecken ein sehr trauriges Buch - man fühlt und leidet mit Lewis, empfindet manchmal sogar die gleiche Hoffnungslosigkeit wie der Junge. Nahezu unfassbar empfindet man den Vater und die Menschen in Lewis' Umgebung, die dem Jungen keinerlei Hilfestellung bieten können oder wollen, ja, ihn lieber weit von sich schieben. So entgleitet Lewis sogar sich selbst, da er sich in seiner Einsamkeit und mit seinen Schuldgefühlen nicht mehr zu helfen weiß...
Trotzdem ist es zugleich auch ein schönes Buch, weil Lewis Aldridge zwar kein einfacher, dennoch ein zutiefst guter Charakter ist. Sadie Jones, die Autorin, hat echt etwas zu erzählen - aus der verqueren Welt der besserstehenden Gesellschaft in den 1950ern in England, die keine Außenseiter, keine aus dem Raster fallenden Menschen, zu ertragen weiß, geschweige denn Mitgefühl und Verantwortung kennt. Wäre da nicht eine Art Seelenverwandte...

Eines noch zur Geschichte: auf dem Schutzumschlag des Buches wird ein Vergleich mit Ian McEwan gezogen - ich weiß nicht, ob dies nötig ist. Sadie Jones kann phantastisch und vor allem sehr gefühlvoll erzählen - es gibt wirklich überhaupt nichts auszusetzten - Sprache und Geschichte sind passend gewählt. Deshalb tut ein solcher Vergleich meiner Meinung nach überhaupt nicht not!

Fazit: Ein beeindruckendes Debüt, auf dessen Verfilmung ich schon gespannt bin!(less)

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Aug 27, 2011 Deb rated it 3 of 5 stars

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...more

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Jun 03, 2011 Sheila rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: coming-of-age, cultural, current_issues, relationships

Here’s another book read on my trip to England and I’ve finally worked out why all the English books I’ve enjoyed recently seem to different from American ones—they’re all written in third person omniscient. I could quickly become accustomed to this—they do it so very well it seems completely natural, just vaguely foreign to my ex-pat reading style. The voice is perfectly suited to Sadie Jones’ quintessentially English tale of repressed emotion, unspoken care and secret pain in The Outcast. The...more

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Mar 05, 2011 rebellyell666 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Inhalt:

Lewis Alridge kommt aus einer privilegierten Familie. Als er eines Tages einen Ausflug mit seiner Mutter Elizabeth zum Fluss macht, ertrinkt diese. Der kleine Lewis steht so sehr unter Schock, dass er beinahe keinen Ton heraus bekommt. Sein Vater Gilbert ist wie gelähmt und hält sich von dem Tag an von seinem Sohn fern. Lewis wird von dort an zum Außenseiter…

Schreib-/Erzählstil:

Jones fiel mir zu manchen Teilen etwas schwer, da ich in ihrer charakterlichen Umsetzung der Protagonisten oft n...more

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Dec 21, 2010 Lilian rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 wi...more

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Jul 07, 2010 Holly marked it as to-read

From Musings: 4.5 stars

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 hom...more From Musings: 4.5 stars

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.
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Mar 15, 2010 Kiwiflora rated it 1 of 5 stars

THE OUTCAST by Sadie Jones

What a depressing, sad and sorry bag of bones this book is. I understand it was originally conceived as a screenplay, maybe that should have told everyone something that it didn't get further than that. But I also see that it is to become a movie directed by the guy who directed Shakespeare in Love. I really can't visualise how that will turn out, although movies have been made of much less. And that reminds me, even though the blurb on the back sounded a bit suspect, I...more THE OUTCAST by Sadie Jones

What a depressing, sad and sorry bag of bones this book is. I understand it was originally conceived as a screenplay, maybe that should have told everyone something that it didn't get further than that. But I also see that it is to become a movie directed by the guy who directed Shakespeare in Love. I really can't visualise how that will turn out, although movies have been made of much less. And that reminds me, even though the blurb on the back sounded a bit suspect, I took it to read because I knew it was being made into a movie. Big mistake.

Because, really not a lot happens in this novel. It has a busy sounding plot, with young Lewis Aldridge, growing up in post-war England in a suffocating satellite/commuter town of London where appearances count for everything. At the age of ten Lewis's lively, attractive and loving mother drowns in a river - the perils of drinking and swimming - and this changes the way his life is quite dramatically. His emotionally retarded father, Gilbert, swamped by grief cannot deal with his own grief, let alone that of his son. He quickly remarries, and life returns to 'normal' as Gilbert knows it, but of course not for Lewis. From this point on the downward spiral of Lewis's life takes off. Increasingly alienated from the people in his closed, insular community who quite simply don't understand him and don't want to, he becomes more isloated, takes to drinking, self harming, visiting a prostitute and ends up commiting arson and goes to prison for two years, where by all accounts he was actually quite happy.

The second half of the novel focuses on his return to the town and to his father's and stepmother's house. Nothing has changed of course, and it is as if he has never been away. Nothing has changed in the neighbourhood either. The other main character in the book is Kit, a girl a few years younger than Lewis who comes from an equally disfunctional family headed by a man who is a master in domestic violence but hides behind the enormous respectability of being the richest man around. There are some truly lovely people that live in this small community! Kit has always been desperately in love with Lewis, probably because she recognises a similarly damaged soul. Now that Lewis is 19, and Kit 15, they begin to notice each other, surprise surprise, and this is the main focus of the last third as they deal with the chaos of their lives.

But the whole thing is so depressing and monotonous and grey and gloomy. Perhaps Ms Jones is trying to depict life in the straightened and controlled times of the 1950s, which she does actually succeed in doing. Her writing is quite descriptive and very visual but it has so many 'ands' in every single sentence. I read another review of this book and the reviewer also commented on the excessive use of 'and'; apparently it is intentional to illustrate the monotony of everything. She succeeds here too. Reading it reminded me very much of Atonement by Ian McEwan, but way way more happens in the latter, plus being a better story, better characters, and you can see it becoming a movie, sad ending nothwithstanding. A vastly superior book, I have no idea how this will be turned into 90 minutes minimum of entertainment. I won't be going! The only reason I finished this book is because I have to review it for bookclub.(less)

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Jul 19, 2008 Deb rated it 4 of 5 stars

Who exactly decides when a person is an outcast? Has society really changed that much since 1950? Don't people still only want to hang with the "right" people? This book brings up a lot of questions that could lead to great discussions in a reading club. And Dickie....I loathe Dickie in this book. When you read it, you'll understand why. You are not stuck with your history. At any time in life you can chose a new direction and create your own new beginning. Thank God for new beginnings.

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Soooo depressing!!	4	55	Jan 14, 2013 06:03am
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About Sadie Jones

was born in London, England, the daughter of a poet and an actress. Her father, Evan Jones, was born in Portland, Jamaica in 1927. He grew up on a banana farm, eventually moving to the United States, and from there to England in the 1950s. His most widely acclaimed work is "The Song of the Banana Man". Sadie's mother, Joanna Jones, was featured as an extra in various television series, including...more

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“There was a sudden stillness like the gap between ticks on a clock, but the next tick never coming.” — 9 people liked it

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