Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2008.
Shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008.
Costa Book Awards 2008 Judges' comment: "The repressive society of ordinary people is elegantly portrayed in an assured novel of great note."
An incredibly moving story about a damaged son returning home from prison determined to make a better life for himself. However, some things may be too badly broken to fix. An enticing, emotional and thought provoking novel that will keep you engrossed until the final page.
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Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 8 January 2009.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
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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.
The Outcast features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, eBooks of the Month, Book Club Recommendations, Romance / Relationship Stories, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
The Outcast is available in Paperback, Hardback
The Outcast was written by Sadie Jones and published by Vintage
The Outcast has 443 pages
£9.89
