🏖️⚖️🏛️ Saint X (2020) 🏛️⚖️🏖️ - Book Review

MY REVIEW

Hardcover: 352 pages

Publisher: Celadon Books (February 18, 2020)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1250219590

ISBN-13: 978-1250219596

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“Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men–employees at the resort–are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. The story turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only the return home to broken lives.

Years later, Claire is living and working in New York City when a brief but fateful encounter brings her together with Clive Richardson, one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister. It is a moment that sets Claire on an obsessive pursuit of the truth–not only to find out what happened the night of Alison’s death but also to answer the elusive question: Who exactly was her sister? At seven, Claire had been barely old enough to know her: a beautiful, changeable, provocative girl of eighteen at a turbulent moment of identity formation.

As Claire doggedly shadows Clive, hoping to gain his trust, waiting for the slip that will reveal the truth, an unlikely attachment develops between them, two people whose lives were forever marked by the same tragedy.

For readers of Emma Cline’s The Girls and Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies, Saint X is a flawlessly drawn and deeply moving story that culminates in an emotionally powerful ending.”

Thank you in advance to Celadon Books for sending me this advanced review copy. A positive review was not required and all views are my own.

[Saint X - Alexis Schaitkin ARC from Celadon Books (debuts February 2020)]

“Saint X” is a fictional Caribbean Island. And, while some reviewers will immediately think of Natalee Holloway’s 2005 disappearance from Aruba – readers will be surprised to learn that Schaitkin did not use that as her guide. Yet, some readers might draw the parallel and will be disappointed.

“Saint X” is told from multiple POVs – Claire/Emily, Clive, and several minor characters in a bold face type usually at the end of a “chapter”. Though often it is hard to tell which POV is narrating the “mystery scenes”. Rather than number her chapters, Schaitkin names them to coincide where the story is taking place.

Claire is seven (7) years old when her college age sister Alison disappears on the last night of the family’s vacation on the Caribbean Island of Saint X in 1995. Alison’s body is discovered several days after she went missing.

The Thomas family makes a move out to Pasadena, where Claire becomes Emily – using her middle name.

Her life is changed and not quite the same. Her family still wants the truth of Alison’s death and more so when suspects are found but released when the evidence and timeline doesn’t align with the facts. Ultimately it is decided that Alison’s death was an accident – but her parents refuse to accept that.

Now, as an adult, Emily is living in New York and soon connects with one of the suspects in her sister’s disappearance and murder. It is more by accident than actual planning.

Emily is determined to find the truth about her sister’s death – to get to the bottom of it. It turns from a fact-finding mission to an over-consuming obsession that overwhelms not only her personal life, but work life as well as she lags behind in her work responsibilities so much so that it has dire consequences. Emily is also learning that the Alison she knew isn’t the one that she gets to know. Still, she can’t let go.

Alison, in death, has consumed Emily’s life. Emily begins dogging Clive, trying to get him to slip up, find something that can convince her that he murdered her sister.

But, just as Emily thinks she’s learned the truth – only it’s a truth she’s always known. Readers will be surprised to learn the truth as well. And, in the end, Emily/Claire learns that the truth sometimes does nothing for us. Is seeking closure about hanging on, or letting go?

The end was not what I was expecting, then again that’s probably what the writer had intended. It was a different and unique novel. I was expecting one ending and wound up with an entirely different ending.

Schaitkin weaves in the past and current stories of other characters central to the story – Clive as well the minor voices we hear in it, mostly at the end of a chapter. Though, at times it seems unnecessary and can clutter up the story. It does well to describe the differences between the islanders who live there from day to day and the vacationers.

As one reviewer stated – it was like they were reading, yet making no progress. After reading that review, I will state that I felt the same way. I do believe that some of the writing could’ve been halved and the story would’ve worked out the same.

If you’re looking for a murder-mystery, you won’t find it in this novel. There is no intrigue. In fact, I’m not sure what it is. I don’t know if that is good or bad.

This would probably be a great weekend read from the library for a change of pace depending on your preferred genre.  

“Saint X” is Schaitkin’s debut novel


3 ⭐⭐⭐/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexis Schaitkin’s stories and essays have appeared in Ecotone, Southwest Review, The Southern Review, The New York Times, and elsewhere. Her fiction has been anthologized in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She received her MFA in fiction from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband and son. Saint X is her debut novel.