Awards
Costa First Novel Award
2009 Shortlist
The Outcast by Sadie Jones
Judges: "The repressive society of ordinary people is elegantly portrayed in an assured novel of great note."
1957 and Lewis Aldridge is travelling back to his home in the South of England. He is straight out of jail and nineteen years old. His return will trigger the implosion not just of his family, but of a whole community. A decade earlier, his father's homecoming takes a different shape. The war is over and Gilbert has recently been demobbed. He reverts easily to suburban life, but his wife and young son resist the stuffy routine. Lewis and his mother escape to the woods for picnics, just as they did in the wartime days. Nobody is surprised that Gilbert's wife counters convention, but they are all shocked when, after one of their jaunts, Lewis comes back without her.
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