The Outcast

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

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ok but not a winner for me - Rated
I am glad I read this as I had seen some very good reviews of it but was disappointed overall. The characters didn't come alive for me at all and there was a lot of introspection.Several times I thought the main character had killed himself but no, he was just in a deep sleep/dream what ever and I got a bit fed up with him. The end came and went very quickly and to be honest was a bit of a let down.

The Outcast - Rated
For a debut novel to break into not only the Orange longlist but also the shortlist is some achievement, and Sadie Jones's The Outcast, currently in the running for The Orange 2008, has propelled her into the public eye.

Starting in 1957 with the release of 19 year-old Lewis Aldridge from prison, the novel sweeps backwards initially through the mid to late '40s to explore the circumstances which led to his incarceration. It then homes back in on the '50s and follows Lewis's current story again.

Being shortlisted for The Orange with a first novel raises expectations and may have contributed to my initial disappointment at the pedestrian prose and slightly lumbering language of the novel. There is no doubt that Jones's book is an engrossing story and that her characterisation and dialogue are both excellent, but her use of English seems at times extremely basic, for example:

'The next day he went into the office and his work went well.'

'Went'?

This use of jarringly unlyrical words like 'went' is common - 'made' is another:

'There had been partings and reunions that had made the sounds of the trains in the distance, as they were heard from the houses, invested with emotion, not just an everyday sound like before.'

And here is the dull word 'had' used to death:

'He had a sudden memory of Jeanie holding him, and the sweetness of the feeling, and had shame about it.'

And here is 'put', another generic word most writers avoid after primary school:

'Alice had her new dress laid out on the bed and the different shoes she might put with it arranged nearby.'

At other times, grammatical constructions seem bizarre or clumsy:

'In his suits and tweed jackets he looked like a father and more approachable, but it was deceiving, because he was a stranger, and it would have been easier if he hadn't looked like someone you might know very well and yet not be.'

Or:

'She had to change trains and the journey was long and she brought sandwiches with her, which she shared with a little girl who was travelling alone and whose mother had asked Kate to keep an eye on.'

Or:

'Alice and Gilbert were sleeping and holding hands, which sometimes they did without knowing they did, and never woke up like that.'

Eh?

Here's yet another:

'He felt his throat burning drily and the strength of the gin in his mouth, and after a few moments the hit of it in his blood and his heart felt it too.'

Maybe a comma between 'blood' and 'and' might have made the above less plodding, but even then it would seem a heavy, cumbersome way of stating something that could have been conveyed in fewer words and with less weight.

Yet despite the clunking, unsparkling prose, I found myself drawn in by the story. The characters are believable and multi-dimensional, and Lewis's confusion and adolescent angst are movingly portrayed. The loathesome Dicky Carmichael is ably etched as a loud, bullying hypocrite, and his two daughters, the vain and adored Tasmin and spiky unfavoured Kit come to life, as does the well-intentioned Alice, stepmother to Lewis and wife to repressed Gilbert.

Many writers can inject simplicity of prose with a fluency that carries it off beautifully - Anne Tyler, Sue Miller, Mark Haddon, Roddie Doyle to name but a few. But writing simply with success is an art and it takes considerable flair to achieve it without sounding like you're stomping through the page weighed down with muddy wellingtons. While the touching story and sensitive portrayal of a teenager in trouble would induce me to read Jones's second novel, the ordinariness of the writing in The Outcast for me opens up again the whole debate about prestigious literary prizes restricted to female authors. Having finished Engleby by Sebastian Faulks the day before embarking on The Outcast, I would have to say that it's an embarrassment that the by far inferior novel is shortlisted for a major prize while the infinitely superior one is bypassed.

***00 1/2

OK, but not the best book I have read in this genre - Rated
This book was a very interesting and enjoyable read, however it did not move me to the extent of other reviewers on this site.
I thought it was well written and evoked clearly the confines of a time in history when rules of society determined how one acted and felt.
Overall, a good book but not one that I would go back to again.

Good book with an outstanding finale - Rated
It is the death of Lewis' mother Elizabeth that triggers his downward spiral. Set in the years following the end of World War 2, it is a society that is rigid, following rules and ignoring the obvious. The tragic death of Lewis' mother leaves a devastating effect on the young boy, as he tries to comes to grips with what happened without showing emotion. Gilbert the father unprepared and unable to comfort Lewis finds solace elsewhere and marries a young woman months after the death of his first wife. This is an extraordinary story of two families and the secrets that are hidden around them as they try to hide their addictions and abuse from one another.

I enjoyed it, but it was the ending that blew me away. I havent been quite as satisfied with an ending as this for a long long time, perhaps one of the finest endings ive ever read. A great look at society in Britain during the 50s and the comfort and caring that adults often neglected children. Enjoyable.

A great first novel - Rated
From the beginning I was hooked by this book. I never lost interest in Lewis' story as the characters are compelling, heartfelt and real.
The story starts with Lewis leaving prison at the age of 19 to return home to his family which comprises of his father Gilbert and his step mother Alice. His mother drowned ten years ago during a picnic by the river and Lewis was the only witness to her death. This catastrophe starts a horrible chain of events for Lewis. The story flashes back to Lewis' childhood and we learn how he became the character that he is.
Tamsin and Kit are 2 local girls. They are both very different in character and play an important part in Lewis' journey. There are some scenes with them and Lewis that are painted so well, you can easily imagine their other conversations and movements.
There are some scenes that are very vivid and quiet disturbing, such as the scenes of his self-mutilation. Overall, the story is powerful and poignant.