The Outcast: A Novel by Sadie Jones Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Outcast: A Novel
Book Review: AN ACHINGLY BEAUIFUL STORY
Summary: 5 Stars
British writer Sadie Jones has given us an amazing debut novel, an achingly beautiful story of loss, love, and redemption. She astounds with her picture of 1950s England, a Surrey where emotions roil beneath a peaceful bucolic surface. With penetrating insight and scrupulously wrought studies she traces the characters as they develop. Her portrait of a young man who almost perishes in a painful search to define himself is especially moving.
The Outcast opens as 19-year-old Lewis Aldridge is released after serving a two-year prison term for setting fire to the village church. He goes home as, in truth, he has nowhere else to go. He's hoping for a new beginning but that is not to be.
Lewis's childhood is described in a flashback to when he was 10-years-old and adapting to his father, Gilbert, being home again after the war. Prior to that time Lewis and his mother, Elizabeth, enjoyed a happy, loving relationship. She doted on him and he returned her affection. Always a shadowy figure, Gilbert, once again takes his place in the home yet remains a puzzlement to the boy.
Soon a dreadful tragedy occurs that sends Lewis into a horrific spiral of isolation, violence, and self-mutilation. Elizabeth drowns on what had begun as a happy river side picnic for Lewis and his mother. Gilbert is little solace to the boy and remarries within a year. Alice, his second wife, knows little of how to reach Lewis who is ostracized by his childhood friends. Riddled with self-hatred his behavior becomes increasingly anti-social, and he withdraws even deeper into himself.
He is virtually shunned by other villagers save for Tasmin and Kit, daughters of Gilbert's employer, Dicky Carmichael. Kit is the youngest daughter who was a tag-along playmate in Lewis's childhood, often ridiculed by her older sister and ignored by the others. The Carmichael household is a dark one, harboring the secret of Dicky's domestic violence. "Dicky often hit Claire (his wife), it was a habit, and part of the pattern of the family, and it wasn't questioned between them at all."
Dicky's rage is soon vented on Kit as he beats her mercilessly, always slapping her hard across the face with an open hand so as not to leave any marks. He would beat her with a belt "until his arm felt quite tired."
Upon his return from prison Lewis finds no welcome or comfort in his home. "Very often Gilbert and Alice were fairly drunk by supper anyway, so it wasn't as bad as lunch, but sometimes the being drunk was worse - you could see what was underneath."
When Lewis learns of the abuse suffered by Kit he longs to rescue her, but feels he has no power to do so. Is it possible that one damaged individual can save another?
With lucid, affecting prose Sadie Jones carries us along to a startling yet satisfying conclusion.
Highly recommended.
- Gail Cooke
Book Review: An Interesting Read
Summary: 4 Stars
All of what's been said in previous reviews is true here. I just put down the novel, and, overall, am depressed. Lewis' hardships are real, difficult and long term. Like life. In fact this story, in a nutshell, is about society branding someone and never letting them forget it. And the domino effect of that in a small town. About not listening. About reading things into something that doesn't exist. About self-fulfilling prophecies. Very moving, but - like I said - depressing. "literature" often doesn't end happily, but realistically. I was pleased to see Lewis garner SOME joy as the last four pages played out! But he's gone off to war...where he'll probably be killed...so like life.Book Review: Couldn't Put it Down
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book from start to finish in a three days. I read it while idling at red lights. I read it while waiting in front of my kids' school. I read it while my husband watched TV in bed next to me. I just couldn't put it down.
Sadie Jones creates a protagonist we care deeply about. He is a damaged boy, then young man, dangerous and frightening, and we root for him desperately throughout the story. At each turn, as things go from bad to worse, we just want him to find his way, to find SOMEONE who will acknowledge him and make him feel he has a place on this earth.
There is an improbable love story, and it is multi-layered and complicated (as all good love stories are). At the end, disaster looms and you just have to race through the pages to find out what will happen.
The prose style takes a little getting used to, but it carries you along like a strong-flowing river.
The novel really delivers. I had tears in my eyes at the end... and when I closed the last page, I was sorry it was over.
Book Review: Disturbing, poignant and lovely to read
Summary: 5 Stars
Gail Cooke's review is spot on, so I won't rehash the plot. Jones' prose is lovely. She's particularly good at the imagery of childhood, at once so practical and fanciful. Beautifully written, emotionally stunning and very highly recommended.Book Review: Little boy lost
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a heart breaking story of a lonely child with an unfeeling father. Lewis Aldridge is an only child who spent all of his time with his adored mother during WW2. When his father, Gilbert is demobbed at the end of the war and returns to his prewar way of conventional middle class life, he feels like an intruder in the close world of his wife and son and resents the boy's presence. When his mother drowns shortly after, Lewis has no one to comfort him and can't understand his father's reaction to his sorrow by telling him to just snap out of it, so retreats to his own silent world, learning to block out the pain and loneliness. Gilbert remarries after less than 2 years but again Lewis is left alone and friendless and resorts to violent behaviour to at least feel something. His only ally is a small girl neighbour who is in much the same boat as he and who, on reaching puberty, has to become accustomed to receiving beatings from her father, the local pillar of the community and church. It's a very emotional story and a potentially tragic one but this brilliant writer leaves the reader with the possibility that the young people will be strong enough to survive and recover from their fear, despite the wrappings of normalcy and hypocrisy which surrounds these twisted and cold parents.