Sadie Jones

Sadie Jones (born 1967) is an English writer and novelist.

Biography

Jones was raised in London, the daughter of Evan Jones, a Jamaican-born poet and scriptwriter, who worked with director Joseph Losey on several projects and Joanna Jones, an actor. Sadie Jones was educated at the Godolphin and Latymer School, a school she disliked.

Jones lived in Paris as a young woman, worked as a waitress and wrote four unproduced scripts and a play, among other things, before her debut novel, The Outcast, was published. It won the First Novel award in the 2008 Costa Book Awards and has been translated into several languages. The first episode of a two part TV adaptation by Jones, directed by Iain Softley, was broadcast on BBC1 on Sunday 12 July 2015. Writing in UK newspaper The Guardian, Julia Raeside wrote, "Sadie Jones risked smashing a perfect thing when she signed up to adapt her book The Outcast (BBC1, Sunday) for television. The novel, one of my favourites, bursts with a fragile intensity that, while filmic, seemed unlikely to survive the transition", before concluding, "Every character uses a tenth of the words another writer might employ, because it’s all there. No need for prodding and over-talking. The tone set by Iain Softley’s beautifully restrained direction and the careful use of music creates a real feeling of loss from the start, just as in the book, but he somehow avoids all hammy visual foreshadowing and narrative signposting, so often used to gee a plot along". The second episode was broadcast a week later, on 19 July 2015. Critical reception was mixed, but the BBC's adaptation of The Outcast received a rating of 7.7/10 (from 502 users) on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).