Sadie Jones's book follows desperate childhoods in the 1950s, a time of drink, sadness, violence, and a general lack of understanding.

I don't want to talk too much about the plot, for fear of ruining it for others, but it is convincing and well-written, though the sparseness and the minimalism of Jones's writing does have a mildly diminishing effect. ( )

For Lewis Aldridge, the main protagonist in The Outcast, life was pretty normal until he was ten years old. Since his unsuccessful attempt to rescue his mother on a fateful summer day and then watching her drown in the river near their home, Lewis has lived a painful existence. Lewis the child and later Lewis the man can't seem to get it right when it comes to living.

The novel is divided into three parts and a prologue. Near London in 1957, we learn that Lewis has just been released from prison. The story begins when Lewis is just a child leading a typical life with his mother. Soon his father returns from war, changing the dynamic of the family. As mother, father and son settle into their new lives together, things begin to be more normal until his mother dies. Then, less than a year later, his father remarries a young woman.

No one knows quite how to interact with Lewis. This great tragedy in his life makes him feel unapproachable, and Lewis doesn't know what to think anymore. His distant father isn't helpful, his inexperienced step-mother quickly becomes exasperated, and his friends find him strange. He's not normal, and he knows it. His pain becomes more and more unbearable, and he begins to cut himself to relieve the tension. He begins to run away to London occasionally where he meets a woman at a jazz club who introduces Lewis to manhood. One day after a violent interaction with a neighborhood boy, he decides to do something more by burning down the church.

He gets out of prison two years later to find that not much has changed since he left, including how others relate to him. He has such hope that things will be better now and that he can regain the trust of others. It is devastating to him that his father is still cold and his step-mother is still bewildered. He reconnects with some old friends, but the relationships are awkward and tenuous.

Lewis' final lesson to learn is that everyone else's life is not as idyllic as it seems. There is plenty of pain to go around for everyone. He finds help and release from unexpected places. He finds betrayal and conspiracy. But he also finds tenderness and love.

I gravitate toward debut novels, and this one was excellent and replete with strong symbolism and messages about human nature, loss, love, and the damage of misunderstandings. The story weighs you down while simultaneously lifting you up. I felt love for Lewis but was a little afraid of him as well. Jones brings the reader into the fray, making you feel that you are with the characters, witnessing and feeling with them.

Elizabeth and Gilbert Aldridge are an ill-matched couple but very much in love when he returns to her and their son Lewis after WWII. Elizabeth is a free spirit who clearly sees the pettiness of Dicky Carmichael, Gilbert's boss; Gilbert also knows Dicky for what he is, but his conventional ambition leads him to suppress judgment. Then, when Lewis is ten, Elizabeth drowns, with Lewis as the only witness, a little boy too small to save her. Suddenly Lewis is alone. His father withdraws from him and remarries a woman too young and too wrapped up in Gilbert to offer any help to Lewis at all.

The book opens with Lewis at nineteen coming back home from a four year prison sentence to Gilbert and Alice who don't want him and can't not take him. Meanwhile, Dicky's daughters have grown up: Tamsin, lovely and shallow; and Kit, less obviously beautiful, but still in love with Lewis.

The rest of the story shows Lewis - both before and after his time in prison - trying to connect with the world. It seems as though his assessment of reality is correct: "It looked like everybody was in a broken, bad world that fitted them just right." That is not the end of the story though, and the book ends with Lewis looking forward in hope.

The Outcast is beautifully written in straightforward, understated prose. Flashbacks are skillfully done, and the whole thing moves forward to its bittersweet conclusion. ( )

Quite moving and gripping. Stayed in the mind long after the book was finished.

The story is set in England in the 1950's. While his father is away at WW2 a young boy develops a close bond with his mother who is a free spirited and warm. On his return the father proves to be very conservative, oppressive and distant. The mother accidentally drowns and the boy is shattered by the circumstances.

The father can't deal with his son at all. The other adult males are also damaged goods who wreak havoc on their families.

The psychological assaults continue as he grows up and he gradually becomes disturbed. In the final conflagration the young man tries, and succeeds, in protecting the one person he cares for.

He ( )

In one house, a tragic set of circumstances lead to sad, disturbing behaviour and consquences; in another house, the bullying head abuses his mostly compliant family. A horrible, well-told story, which I could only read in small chunks, greatly relieved to get to the hopeful, final pages. ( )

Really pretty. Sad. Intriguing. Almost too sad. Boy's mother drowns and this is pretty much about his downward spiral to adulthood. Still, it's beautiful. The way the author uses dialogue and language is simply haunting. The end was my favorite, and I was scared it was going to end depressing like the rest of the book. No. The end made me happy. ( )

I approached this book with uncertainty based on reviews I had read. Once I began the first page, though, I was caught in the net of complicated characters and actions that all carried their consequences. There was not a single character whose life was left untouched by the others, some to their detriment, but others to their perceived salvation. True to life, the problems faced by these characters never came to a magical resolution, but instead shaped the people they would become...just as in real life. The book was superbly written with enough happiness at the end to leave the reader feeling comforted but not enough to ruin the story with a fairy tale ending. ( )

loved this book. so well-written and moving. great insight. ( )

I got so caught up in [The Outcast] that I stayed up until 3:30 last night finishing it. That says something for the power of the book--even though, in terms of content, it is probably the most depressing book I've ever read. The novel starts in 1957, as Lewis has just been released from prison and returns home. We flash back to 1945, with seven-year old Lewis and his mother taking the train to London to meet his father, who has long been away in the war. Dad turns out to be . . . well, not exactly an affectionate father; and things go from bad to worse a few years later when Lewis's mother dies. (No spoilers or details, I promise!) Different sections of the novel cover pivotal events in the years in between and in the weeks following Lewis's return. There's only a sliver of happiness in the ending, so if you're looking for a light summer read, don't pick up this one.

My main criticism is that it is a bit hard to believe that so many characters could be so cruel and downright abusive with no one seeming to notice or care and everyone blaming a ten-year old boy for his own misery. I know that the setting was 1945-57, but even then people might question some of the things that happen to Lewis. No one seems to figure out that his quietness has something to do with the fact that he witnessed his mother's death or that he's angry that his father remarries only five months later? Still, the author's ability to evoke a visceral response in her reader is the novel's strength. She made me physically experience the sadness and anxiety and hopelessness that Lewis must have experienced. ( )

This is a good book, but not a great one - and I was hoping for a great one.
Jones is a talented writer, and I found myself going back to reread some of her lovely phrases. But every character here is ridiculously dysfunctional, and many times I felt I had already heard this story (misunderstood, struggling, brooding young man) - and I did not believe the budding romance that comes near the end of the story. I don't feel I wasted my time reading this book, but I would not keep it in my library. ( )

An enjoyable read. ( )

After two not-so-great reads, The Outcast was exactly what I needed to get over my reading slump. While definitely not a cheery book, The Outcast is emotionally moving, physically shocking, and beautifully written.

Sadie Jones' debut novel tells the story of Lewis Aldridge, a nineteen-year-old boy who in 1957 has just been released from a two-year prison sentence. As Lewis returns home to the small English suburb of Waterford, Jones flashes back to Lewis' childhood and relates the events leading up to his imprisonment. At the age of ten, Lewis experiences a tragedy that changes the course of his life. The next seven years are a downward spiral of violence, self-mutilation, and extreme loneliness. At seventeen, he finally commits an act that sends him to prison - much to the delight of the inhabitants of his town, who always believed that Lewis was "no good."

The Outcast also centres around Kit Carmichael, a girl who has loved Lewis her entire life. When he finally returns from prison, Lewis encounters Kit again and again. As Lewis attempts to return to a normal life, Kit is the only one who believes in him - who believes that he is good. As tensions mount in Waterford, Lewis and Kit hope for redemption, hope for freedom, and hope for a better life.

Jones is a talented author whose style appeals to me. Her prose slips from descriptive to obscure, and the reader is left to make his or her own connections between events. Lewis and Kit have complex, intense emotions, and I often found myself mirroring those emotions. The supporting cast - Lewis' family and Kit's family - are all well-drawn additions to the plot. No character or event seems extraneous, and the ending, while not cut-and-dry, is a satisfying conclusion to the novel.

Though not an overly optimistic novel, The Outcast does offer the reader a sense of hope. Jones expresses the idea that we all have our own set of personal tragedies, and while Lewis' are certainly harsher than most, as human beings we push on through the bad. We seek some form of atonement for our mistakes, we hope for an upturn in our fates, and we continue to live. Lewis and Kit do just this - though times are often bad, they continue to hope, to love, to live.

The Outcast is a fantastic first novel, and I look forward to future works by Sadie Jones. ( )

Did you ever want to grab a character from the pages of a book and hug him? I dare you not to want to embrace Lewis and tell him he's loved. The characters within this debut novel are so three dimensional that you feel for them, know them, and want to sit them down and straighten them out. A book I couldn't put down, but wanted to slowly read to enjoy every word. One of the best books I've picked up in a while. A wonderful book. ( )

The best book I've ever read, besides Fall on your knees and Før du sovner. I am so in love with the boy in this book. You are taken in to his head and you're able to read all his thought through Jones' words. His loneliness is mine, his pain is mine, his love is mine, his confusion is mine, his happiness is mine.

I Love every well spoken, well written word in this book. I live in it still, it's haunting me still, tempting me, loving me, sees me still. I carry it everywhere I go. I read parts of it over and over again. Every time I open it, it rips out my soul, and it seems I like it.

Need to quote my favourite paragraph:
"I see you. You think you're dark, and there's all this darkness around you, but when I look at you ... you're like a shining thing. You're light. You just are. You always were." (Kit says this to Lewis) ( )

Compelling read. Well-drawn characters. Setting is 1950's England where "appearances" are most important. Theme is really "broken" or "wrecked" people. There' s alcoholism, child abuse, wife battering, religious hypocracy - all good family values.

"It looked like everybody was in a broken, bad world that fitted them just right".

In the end all of the characters are doomed to this "broken, bad world" except Lewis and Kit who may have found a way out. ( )

A compelling read which I thought was going to get an unheard of five stars, but by the end I was feeling overwhelmed by the hero's suffering and looking for more in the way of redemption . The hero is complex and well-drawn, but other characters offer little in the way of light and shade. Still a cracking read. ( )

See http://www.acommonreader.org.uk/2009/... for full review or read extract below

I started this book, The Outcast, on Saturday evening and finished it on Monday morning, finding that if I put it down, I was quickly drawn back to this mesmerising read. Frankly I've not read anything quite as compelling in a very long time.

Lewis Aldridge is 10 years old when his mother dies. Lewis was intimately involved in his mother's death, and is marked by association with it in such a way that his father and the neighbours cannot deal with the terrible grief the boy experiences. This is 1950's Britain, when appearance is all and weakness in a boy cannot be countenanced. Lewis has been brought up to address his father Gilbert as "Sir", and this typifies the hands-off relationship, so badly equipped to provide the supportive father/child bond which might have helped them both to come to terms with the tragic loss.

Within no time at all, the dashing Gilbert finds his friends setting him up with various replacement young women, eventually settling for the pretty but ineffectual Alice, who is simply too young to be a replacement mother for Lewis. Poor Lewis is marked by his grief and although Alice tries to mother him, she soon comes to see him as,

. . . broken, and that there was nothing to be done about it. She hoped he would mend, but she lost sight of the idea that she could help. He was like a damaged bird. And they always die . . .

It would be impossible to write about this book without giving away too much to any potential readers. The themes covered, in agonising clarity, are self-harm, physical abuse and family breakdowns. Jones' hurting characters are doomed to act out their respective roles with a complete inability to break out from their destructive behaviour patterns. Some of the characters are hateful, others are merely pathetic, but Jones has given Lewis and his friend Kit strangely charming and powerful personalities which work out a messy but poignant trail through the 436 pages.

And the ending is totally satisfying, with Lewis' final reckoning with his father (so ably depicting complete parental failure) and then finally, a hint of another relationship to come which will surely offer healing to this troubled young man.

In an interview published on YouTube Sadie Jones says that she wrote the story first as a screen-play and maybe this goes some way to explain its narrative pace the vivid pictures the book draws in the reader's mind.

The Outcast reminds me slightly of Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes At The Museum, which follows the story of a similarly misunderstood child. In the video mentioned above Sadie Jones says that her favourite scene in The Outcast is towards the end where the family doctor has a genuinely helpful consultation with Lewis, and I couldn't help but think of the scene at the end of Behind the Scenes where Ruby is helped to understand her past by a psychotherapist. Sadie Jones also shows some of the qualities of Ian McEwan. I make these comparisons only as a tribute to this sparkling first novel which will make its readers watch out for more from this fine writer. ( )

Dark, with a constant sense of doom, and beautfully written. I couldn't put it down at time.

A very enjoyable but thought provoking read ( )

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.

Review also here:
http://bookannelid.wordpress.com/2008... ( )

Dark, haunting and beautifully written. This book deals with some very dark themes and had me in tears several times. I am not sure of when a book last moved me so much. A must read. ( )

Simultaneously captivating and disturbing, British debut novelist Sadie Jones’ story of a young man’s attempt to reconcile great loss and great emotional distance, is similar to a pivotal event that takes place in the book. As with many dramatic events – and dramatic stories, one cannot watch, but one cannot turn away. The story is told mostly from the point of view of Lewis Aldridge, but is sprinkled with snippets in alternate voices, giving the story an interesting perspective. When we first meet Lewis it is 1957 and he is nineteen and just leaving prison after two years. The story then jumps back to 1945 when Lewis and his mother are going to meet his father, a virtual stranger to Lewis, after his demobilization. Formalities and rigid codes of behavior abound in this posh suburban London neighborhood, and Lewis’ ebullient mother watches the clock for the acceptable cocktail time. She and Lewis are close and after she drowns in front of Lewis life is never the same. Jones deftly coveys the ostracism of this closed and suspicious society and Lewis’ lonely self-doubt only adds to his mental troubles. Jones also captures completely the self-loathing and the almost incomprehensible need to turn emotional pain into physical relief as Lewis engages in self-harm by repeatedly cutting his arm. Revolving around Lewis are characters that run the gamut from cliché to complex. There’s Alice, his sudden new stepmother and her insatiable need to be pitied even as she tries to comfort Lewis. Neighbors and sisters Tamsin and Kit both involve themselves with Lewis over the years but neither one is simple or one-dimensional and the reader must continually question their motives. Their father, Dicky, on the other hand, is almost comically evil and becomes Lewis’ nemesis. And Lewis’ father Gilbert is an intense mix of compassion and strict doctrine, quiet direction and aggressive dominance. But perhaps the most memorable element of Jones’ book is a stylistic one. Her writing is terse, choppy, direct, and reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s in its stark emotions and run-on stream-of-consciousness. “He slept and he dreamed, but he didn’t know that he was sleeping, and when he remembered it later it never felt like a dream, but like something that happened to him, with all the clarity and beauty of truth, perhaps more clarity and beauty than that.” Tapping into abuse and emotional turmoil is never easy or particularly pleasant, but Sadie Jones has done an honest and lyrical job of bringing us into the minds and hearts of a handful of conflicted characters. ( )

Really good read. Up very late - couldn't put it down! A sad story of buried grief and personal torment ( )

I LOVED this book! Yay! It's a romance and suspenseful and very Say Anything-ish. So, of course, I like it. It's also set back in the 50s mainly, so it's always nice to read a good historical novel that isn't packed with facts.

Lewis is the outcast. He just returned from two years in prison. And he's only 19. He burned down his church. Why? Let's just say he has anger management issues. He was the only witness to his mother's drowning when he was 10 and his father never acted like a good father. He doesn't know what to think about his stepmother. But alcohol and kissing helps Lewis get by. But then those get confusing, too. The Carmichael girls have always been in his life. Heck, his dad works for their dad. But they are nothing but trouble. Young Kit has always loved Lewis, but Lewis is fascinating by Kit's older sister. Lewis is drawn to both of them in different ways and everything comes to light in their small town by the end of the novel. Read it! ( )

Gripping and heartbreaking and lovely all at the same time. ( )