{"id":33674,"date":"2016-11-23T06:30:52","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T17:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=33674"},"modified":"2016-11-20T18:21:46","modified_gmt":"2016-11-20T05:21:46","slug":"what-im-reading-the-outcast-by-sadie-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2016\/11\/23\/what-im-reading-the-outcast-by-sadie-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"What I’m Reading: “The Outcast” by Sadie Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"the-outcast_sadie-jones\"<\/a>A friend loaned me The Outcast<\/em> from her bookshelf because I said I felt like\u00a0 a break from SFF (Which I do<\/em> read a lot if, it being my genre, so to speak.)<\/p>\n

She thought I might enjoy it and she was right, I did. The Outcast<\/em> is about 1950s, middle class, semi-rural England. In particular, it’s about a boy, Lewis, whose mother drowns in a tragic accident which only he witnesses. The Outcast<\/em> explores the consequences of this traumatic event for ten-year-old Lewis, consequences that are exacerbated because his father is emotionally withdrawn (perhaps as a result of serving in WW2, but perhaps not — this aspect is not really explored in the book) and also jealous of his son’s closeness to his mother.<\/p>\n

The second major character in the book is Kit, the daughter of a neighbouring family who carries a torch for Lewis from a very young age. She is also on the receiving end of her father’s physical violence, a violence that the family conceals from the rest of their small community.<\/p>\n

Although promoted as a novel that explores the stultifying social and family mores of the 1950s, I thought the The Outcast<\/em> was more a character study of the profound and enduring effect tragedy has on Lewis, shaping his transition from child to young man. His story is juxtaposed against a society that, although narrow, is still recognizable in terms of the tendency to judge on scanty information and happily speculate where no sound information is available.<\/p>\n

I also particularly liked Kit’s character. Although the victim of domestic violence she nonetheless actively resists giving in to victimhood, chiefly through strength of personality and a fierce intellect.<\/p>\n

The Outcast<\/em> is not a plotless story, but its strength and focus is the indepth exploration of its characters and their motivations. In the sense that they remain true to character throughout, I am not sure they can be said to develop in a literary sense — but they do feel very real.<\/p>\n

The Outcast<\/em> was Sadie Jones’<\/a> debut novel. Shortlisted for the Orange Prize, it won the Costa First Novel Award in 2008.<\/p>\n

\"the-outcast_sadie-jones\"<\/a>Additional Information:<\/span><\/h4>\n

As mentioned, I read my friend’s copy of The Outcast<\/em>, which was the mass market edition published by Vintage in 2008.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend loaned me The Outcast from her bookshelf because I said I felt like\u00a0 a break from SFF (Which I do read a lot if, it being my genre, so to speak.) She thought I might enjoy it and she was right, I did. The Outcast is about 1950s, middle class, semi-rural England. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33674"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33680,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33674\/revisions\/33680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}