Outsiders in fiction

My recent reading has included several novels that show us the world of the isolate, the outsider. Not just young women trying to make their way in the teeth of family and social opposition, but people who just are not fitting in.
I guess they appeal to readers, because reading is so often an isolated activity, and writers too for the same reason. But more than that. Fiction about outsiders makes us see the world we inhabit from the outside. It is not always a comforting vision.

(…) This novella is about an old man who lives alone in the Alps, beginning to lose his memory, but staunchly a loner. He is befriended by a dog, but rejects the overtures of the local ranger. During the winter the man and dog endure hardship as they live out the cold and empty months, until they find a foot in the snow. Fearing it is the ranger the man seeks to hide it. It is bleak, funny and tragic.

(Caroline Lodge, Book Word)

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