The Outcast

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION

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?

'If you liked Atonement by Ian McEwan, you'll love this' Harper's Bazaar

'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

© Sadie Jones 2008 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

  • An elegant, subtle, haunting novel that stayed with me long after I finished it. Sadie Jones has a long literary future ahead of her

    Tracy Chevalier

  • The prose is elegant and spare, but the story it reveals is raw and explosive… Devastatingly good’

    Daily Mail

  • Jones’s story is imbued with brooding atmosphere and drama. Understated and elegantly narrated with attention to period detail, this is a gripping love story with a twist. If you liked Atonement by Ian McEwan, you’ll love this

    Harper's Bazaar

  • Eminently readable first novel….reads like a thriller, the tension and menace build expertly…a powerful, promising first novel

    Financial Times

  • She writes with simmering intensity… particularly strong on atmosphere… Jones uses small, startling phrases to convey depths of passion and information and she can make seemingly innocuous passages radiate beauty

    Sunday Telegraph

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