The Outcast

I’m a bit behind the times, having only just gotten around to reading The Outcast by Sadie Jones.

Originally published in 2007 by Vintage Books, the story is a harrowing one punctured with beauty.  Lewis is a young boy trying to cope with the aftermath of a tragic accident, surrounded by people who don’t understand him nor want to.  With the exception of Kit, four years his junior, suffering stifling domesticity herself and who has him on a pedestal, until the day he falls and saves them both.

The book won the Costa First Novel Prize, was shortlisted for the then Orange Prize and is a number one bestseller; you can see why when you read it.  Jones is a talented insightful writer with the ability to deliver haunting prose in vivid fluidity:

At the top of the stairs he stood in front of the door and it seemed to him that his mind was so noisy it would shake the air in the still house…

Similarly, after a particular brutal event at home, Kit reflects on her situation:

Her head hurt, under her hair, where she had hit the floor, and it made her whole head feel full of tears that she couldn’t cry. 

Jones conveys the pain and struggle of both Lewis and Kit with conviction and compassion; it’s absorbing from the start – the repression and menace elegantly done.

So I’ve just ordered Jones’s latest novel Fallout, which I anticipate to be just as enthralling.