Customer Reviews

The Outcast (P.S.)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This story takes places in the 1950's in England, though much of the angst portrayed is just as common place today, no matter where you live.

We meet Lewis Aldridge at the beginning of the story, he is 19 years old and just out of prison for setting fire to a church. He is hoping for a new chance at life, a new beginning, but things are off to a rocky start with his father, right from the beginning.

The story then reverts back to Lewis' childhood. He is a happy though quiet child who enjoys his mother, Elizabeth's, company. Elizabeth is an outcast of sorts in that she tends to drink too much and is a free spirit. When her husband, Gilbert, returns from the war there is a shift in patterns at the house. They are expected to behave in a certain way and tend to him. It is obvious from the start that Gilbert is cold and distant from his son. When a tragic incident occurs and Lewis has to return home, without his mother, things get worse for Lewis and the strained relationship between father and son continues to deteriorate.

As time continues, Gilbert, the small community and even Lewis' new stepmother all consider him to be damaged. Lewis becomes even more aloof and begins to cut himself.

Kit Carmichael is the young daughter in an influential family. Her dad just happens to be Gilbert's boss as well. Kit has always liked Lewis and she wants to help him. She has her own problems to deal with in her family but she is always in Lewis' corner. Kit is actually somewhat of an outcast herself and does not agree with most of her family's observations.

When Lewis completes his stint in prison and does return home, he and Kit decide to change their situation and break free from their lives as they know it. They can no longer sit quietly and accept their roles in life.

This is a wonderfully written first novel. Its themes of war, alcoholism, emotional and physical isolation can be applied to today's world as well. No matter the time or place, the possibility of change and hope is always something to strive for.

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

Sadie Jones debut novel The Outcast haunts me still, days after finishing it. The novel delivers a story of love, loss, and redemption as a result of a series of situations that couldn't be helped and were no one's fault really-but irrevocably changed lives.

It's 1957 and 19-year-old Lewis Aldridge has just been released from prison. The crime was setting fire to a church. He heads to his family home simply because he has no where else to go. He's met at the door by his stepmother, Alice, who cheerfully greets him. His father, Gilbert's greeting is different. He demands Lewis drive with him to the church, to see that it has been `fixed.' Lewis is silent. The stage is set; Lewis may have hoped for a new beginning, but already things are not looking good.

We view Lewis' childhood as a flashback. His father recently returned from the war and while Lewis is happy that his father is home, he really doesn't know him. The close relationship Lewis and his mother shared while Gilbert was gone, changes. During a picnic at the river, Elizabeth, Lewis' mother drowns-and suddenly everything changes for Lewis.

Gilbert remarries within a short period of time and neither Gilbert nor Alice, the new wife, can reach the steadily retreating Lewis. The people of the community avoid Lewis, and he continues to withdraw, his anti-social behavior increasing. Two sisters, Tasmin and Kit (daughters of Lewis' boss Dicky Carmichael), are the only people who haven't ostracized Lewis.

But there is a dreadful secret in the Carmichael house, and when Lewis discovers it, he feels powerless to change things. The question is simple: can the damaged Lewis help another damaged soul?

The Outcast will leave you breathless. The characters are rich, full-bodied and well-developed. The plot is startling in both its complexity and yet the ease of putting forth a story of abuse, neglect, guilt and love. The Outcast demands you look at life and ask yourself what are the consequences of the choices we make? Every reader will, I suspect, walk away from this stunning debut with a perspective somewhat different from the next person who reads it.

Armchair Interview says: Highly recommended.

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.

This is a depressing book, but a very well written one. A spare, straight forward prose that draws you in completely and makes it a page turner. The story (no spoilers here) revolves around Lewis, a 19 year-old who has just been released from prison. When he was very young, a terrible, traumatic event changed his life forever. He may be the central character but some others are very important too.

The setting is the beautiful English countryside in the 1950's. Behind the façade, the local (upper class) community is often less than respectable. Behind the façade, the smiles, the cheers, everyone has a personal demon to deal with. Lewis especially, but certainly not only. After he is released from prison (and before that too), most people distrust and dislike him openly. He does not seem to belong anywhere any longer. Life starts crumbling away and not only his. His family has an essential part in the story, as well as some of his neighbours. Peripheral characters in the background are also extremely fitting, meaning that everything and everyone perfectly conveys the sense of false morality, false rectitude lingering all the time. The question is, will something happen to shake and rattle "things"? You bet it does. A subtle tension is felt all the time and it is an escalation of distraught feelings, delivered by a simple, clear narrative. You FEEL for those who suffer, and wish it would stop. And you keep your fingers crossed for something to go well.

A distressing but extremely engaging novel, my true vote would be 4 ½ stars, well done to the author.

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.

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.

I was reading a fellow reviewers blog recently and saw that she had described a book as delicate. It occurred to me that of all the adjectives I've used to describe writing, delicate is not one of them. How does book, novel, story emerge as delicate? I racked my brain to come up with something from my past I would describe as such and still I came up lacking.

And before you think I'm going to use this term for Sadie Jones' The Outcast, I am not. However, since the term was stuck in my head, I did come to associate it with Lewis, the main character, whom I loved.

When we met him, Lewis is a young nineteen-year-old fresh out of prison. However, his story goes back - way back to that of a young child who first doesn't understand the presence of a new man in his mother's life. (His father, of whom he has no memory, freshly returned from WWII.) And then as a slightly older child who is the sole witness to his mother's tragic drowning.

When you add a distant father who in his reservation casts a veiled question of Lewis' guilt in his mother's death; a community who whispers assumptions of the mother's alcoholism contributing to the cause; and a quickly acquired, new young-step mother who does her best to bury the ghost of the home's former mistress, a troubled and yes, delicate, teen emerges.

Set primarily in the 1950's, The Outcast is full of contemporary themes: child abuse and domestic violence, cutting, drunk driving, sex and the pressures of keeping up appearances, reminding readers that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

In Lewis, Jones paints a portrait of grief and repression, and the ills that grow within when one tries to hide and cover emotional wounds.

Recently, our pastor spoke on the false truth of "time heals all wounds" arguing instead that "time heals clean wounds." Injuries that are covered without being addressed properly first are left to fester and rot. And so it is with Lewis.

A provoking read, The Outcast is recommended for those who are not afraid to catch The Outcast: A Novel (P.S.)a glimpse of the darkness that can take up residence within the human soul.

I was a little bit hesitant to pick up this book, thought it was nothing for me. But I was so wrong and I am so glad I did read it. It is highly entertaining. It has everything a book should have, a good story well told, drama and tragedy, love and caring and a credible ending. We are following the people in a small English community from 1945 and up to 1957. They are all behaving extremely self-righteous and without mercy, which lead to lots of tragedy for so many. The story develops in a way that makes you want to find out how it ends, keeping you reading and you don't want to stop before you have finished the last page. I felt so much empathy with Lewis, the leading character. 12 years of hard life could so easily have been avoided. His entire childhood is ruined, an innocent child is not being taken care of - with devastating consequences for him and several others. I recommend this book to everyone - a great read!

What a terrific book! I can't believe it is the author's first. Ranks with Barbara Vine and Graham Greene. Compelling portrait of claustrophobic family life in Surrey 1945-57 which nicely captures the flavor of the times (I remember the sight and smell of bombsites in London in the early 1950's and the grim postwar atmosphere). Characters are well-developed, dialogue is realistic and subtle, prose liquid and compelling, plot flows naturally from the characters. Can't wait for the author to write more!