The Outcast is the emotionally charged story of Lewis Aldridge, his family, his peers and his neighbours in Waterford, Surrey. Set very firmly in the 1950s the book opens with the atmospheric home-coming of a 19 year-old Lewis after a spell in jail.

As the story unfolds Lewis’ past and the reason for his incarceration are gradually revealed. Brought up largely by his mother, Lizzie, he is a sensitive, thoughtful boy but as the end of the war brings his father, Gilbert, home Lewis’s life and character change drastically. Gildert’s stuffy and overbearing attitude towards parenting, social duty and regime soon quash the light, loving atmosphere that Lewis and Lizzie have built around them. So when tragedy strikes and Lewis is left to be brought up by his father and a young, naïve step-mother he feels misunderstood and alone and starts to go off the rails.

Meanwhile Kit, a couple of years his junior, watches from her neighbouring home, their paths seldomly cross but when they do she is smitten. Her own troubled home-life and the anguishes of growing up a younger sister to the village beauty lead her to feel a sense of bonding with Lewis and she watches his mistakes from afar with sympathy and compassion.

Evocatively told The Outcast is a rare reading treat that explores the constraining social duties and emotional denial of the 1950s and considers the overwhelming and often dangerous effects that heavy-handed formality can have on young minds.

About the author

Sadie Jones has been a screenwriter for 15 years she lives in London and The Outcast is her first novel.

In an article in book trade magazine, The Bookseller Jones gives a background to the novel and what lead her to write it...

Her starting point was "the idea of somebody who is damaged, and who every¬one turns away from instinctively, as animals will turn from something that's wounded; ¬people are disgusted by a person who is hurt, because we find them frightening".

Though she barely recognised it on a conscious level until after the book was done, she was deeply influenced by the iconography of 1950s films: James Dean in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ or Marlon Brando in ‘The Wild One’. "I was so in love with all those romantic anti-heroes while I was in my teens," Jones says. "Marlon Brando does excellent male suffering, even in ‘The Wild One', when he's fat and it's ridiculous—such a period piece. He's the leader of a motorbike gang which terrorises small-town America, but somewhere at the core of it he's in pain. Misunderstood boys: love them!"

For the full article please follow the below link www.thebookseller.com/in-depth/

Author Interview

1. You've had a fifteen year career as a screenwriter, did you find writing for the page a very different experience to writing for the screen?

When I began the book I thought that the process would be very different, but many of the decisions and aims are the same: what is left out and what is left in, and trying to tell a story so that it lives.

2. The Outcast is set in the 1950s, what made you choose this era as a background for the book?

The decision to put the story in the 1950s was one of the earliest ones, along with who Lewis was, and where it would be set. I needed to isolate Lewis entirely – 1950s Surrey seemed the obvious place to do it. Also, I have always loved the fifties, and the films and books of that period.

3. Lewis is a very troubled yet charismatic young man, do you think you would like him if you met him in real life?

That’s a very hard question to answer, because I don’t see Lewis from the outside, so imagining meeting him is odd! I think I would like him, though, if he wasn’t in one of his entirely silent moods.

4. Some of the scenes in the book, particularly those between Gilbert and Lewis are very poignant, did you find these upsetting to write?

I found a lot of the book upsetting to write, but writers are also fairly ruthless about what they put their characters through.

5. Psychology and human behavior are very central themes to the book, is this an area that you've always been interested in?

I think if you write about human relationships you’re always exploring the psyche and the soul. I don’t separate certain perhaps more extreme – things that people do from others.

6. Alcohol is at the heart of the novel and the root cause or effect of many of the problems that are raised in it, is this an issue that you purposefully set out to raise?

Again, I never thought in terms of issues, but yes, alcohol is in many ways one of the the main characters in story. Drinking, like ways of expressing love, or violence, is passed down through families.

7. You capture the voices and concerns of children, especially in the voice of young Kit, extremely well, did you conjure them from your own childhood experiences or from watching your children?

I think that we are all much closer to our childhood selves than we often think, so when we read about childhood it can surprise us how immediate or moving it is, when perhaps those feelings are just there, waiting to be accessed all the time. Also, I loved Kit, and felt very close to her. I don’t consciously use my own life or experience at all.

Starting Points for your discussion

1) Sadie Jones worked as a screenwriter for fifteen years – do you think this is reflected in her writing?

2) Do you think Gilbert is jealous of Lizzie and Lewis’s strong bond?

3) “He thought there must be something wrong with a person who would rather be in Brixton prison than their own home.” Do you agree with Lewis in this statement? Why do you think he feels this way?

4) Both Gilbert and Dick seem to bully their families. Do you think that they behave in this way because they consider it to be socially acceptable?

5) What parallels can you draw between Kit and Lewis’s childhood experiences?

6) Do you think either Lizzie or Alice married Gilbert for love? How do you think he feels about them?

7) Do you think Lewis ever really reciprocates Kit’s feelings?

8) Do you think that the issues raised in the novel could have been resolved if they had just talked to each other? Would this have been possible with the 1950s social restraints?

9) How do you think Waterford and its residents have changed when Lewis returns from prison?

10) How do you think attitudes towards some of the issues raised in the book have changed since the 1950s. Look at:

Alcohol

Self-harm

Church

Recommended further reading

Atonement by Ian McEwan. Read the reading guide

Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy. Read the reading guide

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Read the reading guide

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. Read the reading guide

Recommended films

Rebel without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955)

The Wild One (László Benedek, 1953)