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 novel is set in England towards the end of the 1950s; it’s dark and haunting with families hurt by tragedy, love turned to despair, and community holding firm to community values, stiff upper lip and all.

In 1947, a ten-year-old boy waits for his father’s return from the war. In 1957, father awaits the son’s return. In between, the world has changed. Father and son can’t close the gap that tragedy’s built between them, so now they watch each other fall apart.

Across the village, another family deals with pain in similarly secret ways. Teenagers reach out and past each other, never quite connecting, just as they did as children, and the wounds of the past begin to open again.

The narrative is tight and tense, the vision clear, and the insight wholly evocative and powerful. Even as every turn leads further into darkness, the prospect of light remains, and even the worst wounds can still be redeemed. The Outcast is a truly beautiful tale of a young man dealing with his mother's death, his father's coldness, and his community's unwillingness to make allowances. The novel cuts through secrecy with a razor blade of clear observation. By the end the protagonist wears his wounds with pride and the reader can share a sigh of hope.

Disclosure: My sister-in-law has wonderful taste in books and kindly passed this one on to me.