The Outcast

The Outcast

by SadieJones (Author)

Synopsis

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 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 has been 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 predict the painful and horrifying secrets that must first be forced into the open. As menacing as it is beautiful, The Outcast is a devastating portrait of small-town hypocrisy from an astonishing new voice.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 448
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 16 Jun 2008

ISBN 10: 0099513420
ISBN 13: 9780099513421
Book Overview: 'In the tradition of Atonement and Remains of the Day...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.' Margot Livesey
Prizes: Winner of Good Housekeeping Book Awards: Best Debut 2008 and Costa First Novel Award 2008. Shortlisted for Galaxy British Book Awards: Sainsbury's Popular Fiction Award 2009.

Media Reviews
Febrile and atmospheric * Good Book Guide *
An elegant, subtle, haunting novel that stayed with me long after I finished it. Sadie Jones has a long literary future ahead of her -- Tracy Chevalier
The prose is elegant and spare, but the story it reveals is raw and explosive... Devastatingly good' -- Eithne Farry * Daily Mail *
Jones's 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 *
Eminently readable first novel....reads like a thriller, the tension and menace build expertly...a powerful, promising first novel * Financial Times *
Author Bio
Sadie Jones is a novelist and screenwriter who was born and brought up in London. Her first novel, The Outcast (`Devastatingly good', Daily Mail) won the Costa First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. It was also a Richard and Judy Summer Reads number one bestseller and adapted for BBC Television. Her second novel, Small Wars (`Outstanding', The Times; `One of the best books about the English at war ever', Joel Morris), was published in 2009, and longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her third, in 2012, was The Uninvited Guests (`A shimmering comedy of manners and disturbing commentary on class... a brilliant novel', Ann Patchett) followed by Fallout in 2014 (`Intoxicating and immersive', The Sunday Times).