Radio 4 Bookclub - Listen together - The Outcast by Sadie Jones

Hi All,

I hope you're all well and getting to enjoy the sun :-)

In April a few of us went to a Radio 4 Bookclub recording with the Sadie Jones for her book The Outcast.

It was great fun and between us we asked five questions. I'm hoping that at least one made the final cut.

I'll put the questions that we asked up closer to the time.

The venue for this will be in a private members home, so this meetup will only be open to established members of the book group. We will meet at the house at 3:30pm to get settled and refreshed by the start of the program at 4pm. We will then divert to the nearest pub to discuss the show.

New members or members that have not been for a while will not be able to attend.

In addition, if the meetup becomes full then priority will be given to those that went along to the recording.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update:

Please see below the gist of the questions that we asked on the night - three were from me with one from Sheila and one from William:

Hannah - "Do you believe, at least in the 1950s, that the upper middle classes sacrificed morality and spirituality for the sake of stability and security?"

Hannah - the one that Naughtie liked - about the Jones' perspective as a mother and not wanting her child to be tainted with another child's unhappiness and needs. I then linked this to Lewis' aunt in the book not wanting to take him be accuse she didn't want to taint her family with his suffering.

Hannah - the most tenuous / rambling - the link I made with the passage she had read of Lewis and his Dad and how that was a good example of the pared back prose. How she had said she had been in training for 15 years for her first novel and was that simplistic style of writing deliberate inorder to amplify the emotional immaturity of Lewis.

Sheila - "In burning down the church, Lewis directly attacks the moral and social heart of 1950s suburban England. As this is so negatively presented, do you consider Surrey to be the dark heart of England?"

William - "To what extent is Lewis' sexual appeal to various women in the book a product of his being a damaged person?"

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope to see you then.

Hannah :-)