Critical Review "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton S.E. Hinton wrote this novel while she was in high school, at the young age of sixteen. It was completed in 1967. She has written other novels such as That Was Then This is Now, Rumble Fish, and Taming the Star Runner. The novel, The Outsiders, was written about living in the sixties amid gang rivalries. It is told through the personal thoughts of Ponyboy, a fourteen-year-old who belongs to a gang known as the Greasers, who despise the upper-class Socs (pronounced SO-ches), the West Side Rich Kids. Hinton does an excellent job of describing mild-mannered gang membe