The Outcast
Reviewed by Zack Handlen
April 3rd, 2008
The Outcast opens well enough, with a young man getting released from prison and coming home to a less-than-warm welcome. The story then jumps back 12 years to show that young man as a boy, detailing the troubled history that led him astray. Then the cracks begin to show, gradually at first, but with an accelerated growth that finally spiderwebs through the entire narrative. When a major female character gets her first period moments after being beaten by her father for the first time, it isn't really a surprise; the scene is heavy-handed, squirm-inducing, and, in terms of the rest of the novel, pretty much par for the course.
Outcast takes place in Waterford, England, a small town outside London that doesn't feel too far off from Stepford, Connecticut. Growing up, Lewis Aldridge has a rough time; his father, Gilbert, is distant, and when his mother drowns in a freak accident, Lewis and Gilbert drift apart almost immediately. The situation isn't improved when Gilbert marries Alice, a beautiful younger woman whose need to please can't get past her stepson's blank despair. Lewis' struggles with loss are met by suspicion or outright hostility from the community around him; he finally lashes out as a teenager, destroying one of the village's most treasured institutions. After serving a two-year sentence for his crime, Lewis returns to Waterford to find that nothing's changed. But Kit Carmichael, daughter of Lewis' most vocal critic, may be just the thing he needs to get over the past.
In her debut novel, Sadie Jones writes in tasteful, clipped sentences about people who can't help repeating past mistakes; it's too bad those mistakes—step-incest, alcoholism, child abuse, self-mutilation—come off like the contractual obligations of a V.C. Andrews ghostwriter. Most of Outcast's characters are well-drawn, but their interactions rely on forced drama instead of developing organically, resulting in a plot that's simultaneously mechanical and meandering. Jones uses Lewis and Kit's battle against society to make a statement against blind conformity, but her concept of rebellion is nearly as bland as the stuffed shirts who hold the heroes back. It reads like the poetry of a gifted high-school student: achingly sincere, but without the maturity to matter to anyone old enough to rent a car.