Customer Reviews
LIFE CAN BE CRAP ! - By: J. F. Crystal-farrell, 20 Jul 2008 
I can relate to lewis. my childhood wasn,t easy as you didn,t know who to turn to & thinking everybody is against you . I love this book . Sadie Jones ,well done & i hope you write more good books in the future .
Amazing debut - By: gorgoneion, 17 Jul 2008 Sadie Jones's moving story of young Lewis's struggle with the emotional crippling delivered by family events & (quoting another review) "communal failure to take responsibility for a troubled child" is both absorbing & beautifully written, without any sentimentality. I was a child in the 1950s, it's hard to believe that Sadie Jones wasn't there as well! Her evocation of the period is admirable & inaccuracies of detail are minimal (eg British police cars had bells not sirens, & a girl would have worn stretch slacks not jeans) & certainly don't detract. The paralllel & horrifying portrayal of the Carmichael family is entwined with that of Lewis to such an degree that the reader alternately hopes for & dreads the resolution of Lewis & Kit's love story. I read this avidly in two consecutive days & hope the next Sadie Jones novel is already well on its way to us.
Breathtaking! Most moving and impressive new novel I've read for a long time! - By: Goth lady, 21 Jun 2008 This is a superb novel, worthy of alll the accolades it has received. Not just a page turner, but also a deeply moving story of pain & redemption--and an unusual love story. The sense of period is deftly realised too---with alll the hypocrisies & inhibitions of post-War middle England. The style is also engaging --it seems to me that the deceptively simple language & the 'oddities' of syntax that another reviewer has objected to on this site are deliberate---the reader is placed, for much of the time, within the mind of the 'outcast', the person who is dislocated both from himself & society, & thus the style reflects that.
The ending is deeply satisfying, & I can forgive the one little tilt into melodrama towards the end.
Kit & Lewis will remain in my mind for a long time to come.
For me, this book is up there with 'Atonement' & 'The Go-Between' & infinitely superior to Anne Enright's recent ghastly Booker Prize winning novel!
ok but not a winner for me - By: Kate, 31 May 2008 
I am glad I read this as I had seen some very good reviews of it but was disappointed overalll. The characters didn't come alive for me at alll & 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 & I got a bit fed up with him. The end came & went very quickly & to be honest was a bit of a let down.
The Outcast - By: Leyla Sanai, 24 May 2008 
For a debut novel to break into not only the Orange longlist but also the shortlist is some achievement, & 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 initiallly through the mid to late '40s to explore the circumstances which led to his incarceration. It then homes back in on the '50s & follows Lewis's current story again.
Being shortlisted for The Orange with a first novel raises expectations & may have contributed to my initial disappointment at the pedestrian prose & slightly lumbering language of the novel. There is no doubt that Jones's book is an engrossing story & that her characterisation & dialogue are both excellent, but her use of English seems at times extremely basic, for example:
'The next day he went into the office & his work went well.'
'Went'?
This use of jarringly unlyrical words like 'went' is common - 'made' is another:
'There had been partings & 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, & the sweetness of the feeling, & 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 & the different shoes she might put with it arranged nearby.'
At other times, grammatical constructions seem bizarre or clumsy:
'In his suits & tweed jackets he looked like a father & more approachable, but it was deceiving, because he was a stranger, & it would have been easier if he hadn't looked like someone you might know very well & yet not be.'
Or:
'She had to change trains & the journey was long & she brought sandwiches with her, which she shared with a little girl who was travelling alone & whose mother had asked Kate to keep an eye on.'
Or:
'Alice & Gilbert were sleeping & holding hands, which sometimes they did without knowing they did, & never woke up like that.'
Eh?
Here's yet another:
'He felt his throat burning drily & the strength of the gin in his mouth, & after a few moments the hit of it in his blood & his heart felt it too.'
Maybe a comma between 'blood' & '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 & with less weight.
Yet despite the clunking, unsparkling prose, I found myself drawn in by the story. The characters are believable & multi-dimensional, & Lewis's confusion & adolescent angst are movingly portrayed. The loathesome Dicky Carmichael is ably etched as a loud, bullying hypocrite, & his two daughters, the vain & adored Tasmin & spiky unfavoured Kit come to life, as does the well-intentioned Alice, stepmother to Lewis & 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 & 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 & 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
