The Outsider

The OC #1

by Cory Martin

The Outsider tells the story of Ryan Atwood, the boy from the wrong side of the tracks, who, through a twist of fate, finds himself living in luxury in the salubrious Newport Beach. This is the first novelization of the series.
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL75145...

Genres: Young Adult, Fiction, Tv

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2004

About the author

A graduate of the University of Southern California, Cory has a B.A. in English-Creative Writing, and spent time studying literature at Cambridge University in England. By the age of twenty-five, she had garnered writing credits on the hit television show, "The O.C." and had been asked by Scholastic to pen three young adult novels based on the same T.V. series. She is the author of "Love Sick" a memoir about dating, life in Hollywood and dealing with MS. Her essays have appeared online with XOJane, The Mighty, and Elephant Journal.

As a passionate yogi, Cory Martin is also a 500-hr RYT and a regular instructor at the famed Santa Monica Pier's run and yoga program, ROGA. She teaches at various studios around Los Angeles and is the writer behind the documentary film "Titans of Yoga" and her book "Yoga for Beginners" was released in August, 2015 by Althea Press.

To find out more about Cory follow her on Instagram at @corymartinwrites or on facebook at fb/corymartinyoga

Reviews

[Stephanie A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this stupid book so much. An adaptation of the first 7 episodes with strict focus on the kids, it's a mixture of novelized scenes from the show and seamlessly added original material. Is it marvelous literary writing? No, of course not. It's full of short, blunt sentences and a lot of telling over showing, with minimal introspection or analysis. But the thing is, there is nothing quite like being able to hold a TV show in your hands and experience it as a novel. This is something I've often wished TV shows had, and occasionally tried to create myself, so having it ready-made for a series I loved is like some sort of specially commissioned birthday present. This was a pretty solid show in its early days, and this book captures that.

The scenes from the show don't always line up perfectly with canon -- quotes are often altered a bit or have additional dialogue, and not all of the scenes line up exactly as described (the fight with AJ when Ryan is thrown out, for instance) -- but it's better if you think of it as getting to view alternate takes. One of the things that conflicts with canon is a poignant original scene that takes place when Ryan is hitchhiking after the fire, in which he rips off the leather choker -- the last thing his father gave him before going to prison -- and throws it away in a symbolic gesture. This would work a whole lot better if it actually offered an explanation for the choker's disappearance on the show, whereas in actuality he continues to wear it for several episodes after. However, most of the original material works beautifully as fill-in canon, including 30-odd pages of backstory that set up context for what Ryan was doing in the hours and minutes before the opening scene of the pilot and a day or two in Marissa' life before she meets him.

Biggest weakness: endless repetitions of "the Pucci dress." This dress has literally no significance to the show whatsoever (it's the multi-colored one Summer wears on the catwalk during the Fashion Show), but someone is so in love with their headcanon for its origins that it gets mentioned like 60 times as A Symbolic Metaphor of the bright escape Marissa craves from her boring, artificially perfect life.

But all in all, I for one really enjoyed reading this before, after and while watching the episodes it's based on. The two versions just enhance each other in an infinite feedback loop of joy. It's kind of like having a secret insider's guide that is less annoying than a commentary track. That, and given that Ryan doesn't exactly like to be Feely the Share Bear, sometimes you just want to read in black and white letters some eight dozen variations on this baby white knight's pathological need to comfort, rescue, hold and otherwise take care of Marissa.

...anyway, this is what happens when you give me an opening to talk about the TV shows I love on a book site.

[ry · Rating 1 out of 5]

I bought this book for a quarter probably 5 years ago as a sad, weird joke with myself. I tried to tell myself I wasn't really buying it to read it, but I knew the day would come. I'm not certain what I expected—maybe a nostalgic jaunt through some strangely comforting stories—but this book was so bad. It is a bland and essentially shot-for-shot description of the first 6 episodes of the show—somehow with less insight into the characters, despite the freedom of it's meandering omniscient third-person narration.

That said, it is now my favorite book based on this alone:

"In a county of Orange, Chino was gray."

[Alper Kaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edebî bir değeri var mıdır, yok mudur; bu ciddi olarak tartışılabilir ve muhtemelen de cevabımız "Yoktur" olur ancak benim için lise çağlarımın bir arka fonu olan diziye kısa süreli de olsa tamamen dönüş niteliği taşıyor bu kitap. Çünkü dizinin hikâyesi ile birebir yazılmış. Üstelik yedi ay boyunca bu kitabı aradım, tam umudumu kesmişken bulduk. Dolayısıyla manevî değeri de çok yüksek...

[Mónica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ay, lloro, me ha encantado, ha sido como volver a ver la serie. Aunque Marissa y Ryan son insoportables x1000000 por escrito, PERO SETH Y SUMMER *________*

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's like a badly done recap of the first few episodes, jumping through highlights one after the other without any real cohesion or depth.

[Kyle Harrison · Rating 1 out of 5]

I struggled to get through this. Bland, boring, repetitive.. this sucked. The best part was the beginning - the parts setting up what we saw in the beginning of the Pilot episode of The OC. Unfortunately, this turned bad quite quickly after that. This cuts out all of the adult's plot lines and turns a ton of genuinely important parts of the TV show's plot into nothing but a line or two in the book. I'm not sure if this wasn't just written from a TV Guide's summary of each episode, because it seems like that. And the repetition. Oh God. By the (what felt like) 700th repetition of 'Pucci dress' or Marissa being described as either tiny or skinny, I was over this.

[Antonio Romero]

hi i want to finish reading this book

[Kristyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I loved this show, but man this book did not do the show any favors.

[Spenser Milo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The great american novel in its purest form

[Hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was mildly interested in reading this book since the blurb promised me 'the story behind the story'. Well if this is what is behind the story, I'm surprised there is a story at all. This woeful narrative was nothing more than a poor retelling of the first few episodes of the television series, with poorer dialogue and the added burden of poor exposition. Martin is in dire need of learning the expression 'show, don't tell', and I'm afraid this is all he did, trundling from scene to scene in a manner typical of a child writing a story.

The book was lifted straight from the scripts, and in some places read as though Martin were just rearranging the stage direction, particularly in the Charity Ball and Cotillion scenes. I refrain from calling them passages, as they were not passages at all: snippets from conversations and observations at best.

The 'cliff-hanger' at the conclusion is hardly enough to make me go back for seconds, and I'm sure even the biggest of fans would agree, this tv-to-book adaptation is not worthy to associate with the brand from which it is derived.

[Rose]

JF Mar

[Legolas]

ff

[jamie · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's pretty disjointed, but if you've seen the show as much as I have you get it.

Seth never did take Summer to Tahiti. Sad.

[Tayah Medhaug]

Amazing book. I hope to read the rest. Characters definitely didn't look like what I expected. I hope to watch the movie and read the rest of the series. Lovin' it.

[Gerardo Bros]

its a good book