The Outcast
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4.0 • 21 Ratings
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
‘If you liked Atonement by Ian McEwan, you'll love this’ Harper's Bazaar
The bestselling novel from the author of The Snakes, The Outcast is a powerful portrait of unexpected love and treacherous charades against the backdrop of a sleepy post-war English village
August 1957. Lewis Aldridge, straight out of jail, stands alone at a Surrey railway station.
He’s returned to the village where he grew up: the village where, a decade earlier, tragedy tore his family apart, leaving him to a troubled adolescence without a mother and with a father he barely knew.
Now, the only person who understands him is Kit, daughter of a bullying local businessman. Soon they realise that to forge their own futures, they must first confront the darkest secrets of their past.
As family, love, passion, sex and violence become ever more so intertwined, can Kit and Lewis find their way back to each other amidst the chaos?
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‘A tragic account of the devastating effects of parental abuse and the redemptive power of true love’ Guardian
'In the tradition of Remains of the Day...a passionate and deeply suspenseful novel’ Margot Livesey
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WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in post WWII suburban London, this superb debut novel charts the downward spiral and tortured redemption of a young man shattered by loss. The war is over, and Lewis Aldridge is getting used to having his father, Gilbert, back in the house. Things hum along splendidly until Lewis's mother drowns, casting the 10-year-old into deep isolation. Lewis is ignored by grief-stricken Gilbert, who remarries a year after the death, and Lewis's sadness festers during his adolescence until he boils over and torches a church. After serving two years in prison, Lewis returns home seeking redemption and forgiveness, only to find himself ostracized. The town's most prominent family, the Carmichaels, poses particular danger: terrifying, abusive patriarch Dicky (who is also Gilbert's boss) wants to humiliate him; beautiful 21-year-old Tamsin possesses an insidious coquettishness; and patient, innocent Kit not quite 16 years old confounds him with her youthful affection. Mutual distrust between Lewis and the locals grows, but Kit may be able to save Lewis. Jones's prose is fluid, and Lewis's suffering comes across as achingly real.
