The Outcast

One summer's day in 1957, nineteen-year-old Lewis Aldridge stands alone at Waterford railway station. The only person awaiting his return is a fifteen-year-old girl called Kit Carmichael. Like him, she endured a childhood spent in the stifling atmosphere of an English village recovering from the ravages of the Second World War. A decade earlier it was Lewis who waited for his father's homecoming from the war. His mother, a free-spirited and glamorous woman, holds husband and son in her thrall. But when tragedy strikes, Lewis and his father, unable to console one another, are torn apart by their grief. As menacing as it is beautiful, The Outcast is a devastating portrait of transgression and redemption.
I think it's fair to say that Sadie Jones' The Outcast is one of my top favourite books. Winner of the 2008 Costa First Novel Award, this is a truly beautiful novel. I gave this book to a colleague for Christmas and she's just finished it and can't stop raving, which inspired me to post this!

It's not distant in its style and tone from Richard Yates, actually, who I talked about a couple of days ago. Also, it may sound like a weird thing to say but the whole book feels very green... Maybe I was just made to think that from the cover, but generally it has a real green haze to it! Very fresh, very English Home Counties. Besides from being green... it's a really touching story. It's essentially about relationships and how they can both break and form when tragedy strikes.

My favourite relationship in this book is that between Lewis and his father and I'm sure Freud would have lots to say about this relationship too... I don't give much away by saying that their relationship is difficult from the very start and this seems to stem from a lack of any fundamental understanding of one another. It's incredibly frustrating to read, so much so that at one point I did well up. I think now is a good time to say that I very rarely cry in books and so welling up is a momentous reading experience for me... It's not quite up there with the Snape scene in the Deathly Hallows (please forgive the reference...) but The Outcast did similarly comfort me by affirming I'm not a cold-hearted non-crier...

Simply, it's fantastic. I couldn't recommend it enough and I can't wait for her third book to come out in March - The Uninvited Guests. Her first novel, though, gets 9/10!