A Saint from Texas

by Edmund White

Overview

From Edmund White, a bold and sweeping new novel that traces the extraordinary fates of twin sisters, one destined for Parisian nobility and the other for Catholic sainthood.

Yvette and Yvonne Crawford are twin sisters, born on a humble patch of East Texas prairie but bound for far more dramatic and tragic fates. Just as an untold fortune of oil lies beneath their daddy's land, both girls harbor their own secrets and dreams-ones that will carry them far from Texas and from each other. As the decades unfold, Yvonne will ascend the highest ranks of Parisian society as Yvette gives herself to a lifetime of worship and service in the streets of Jericó, Colombia. And yet, even as they remake themselves in their radically different lives, the twins find that the bonds of family and the past are unbreakable.

Spanning the 1950s to the recent past, Edmund White's marvelous novel serves up an immensely pleasurable epic of two Texas women as their lives traverse varied worlds: the swaggering opulence of the Dallas nouveau riche, the airless pretension of the Paris gratin, and the strict piety of a Colombian convent. For nearly half a century, Edmund White's work has revitalized American literature, blithely breaking down boundaries of class and sexuality, and A Saint From Texas is one of his most joyous, gorgeously written, and piercing works to date.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635572551
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	61,454
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Edmund White is the author of many novels, including A Boy's Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, The Farewell Symphony, and Our Young Man. His nonfiction includes City Boy, Inside a Pearl, The Unpunished Vice, and other memoirs; The Flâneur, about Paris; and literary biographies and essays. He was named the 2018 winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction and received the 2019 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation.

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/06/2020

White (The Unpunished Vice) serves up a mesmerizing sensual history of identical twin sisters who leave their booming Texas oil town for Paris and a Colombian convent. As teens in 1950s Ranger, Tex., Yvonne and Yvette Crawford are as different as can be. Yvonne listens to top-10 radio hits, reads women’s magazines, and aspires to French aristocracy and a career in fashion; Yvette, with a “crush on God,” prefers Bach and performing acts of charity. Both are determined to escape their small-minded, oil-rich abusive father and social climbing stepmother. Most of the retrospective narrative comes from Yvonne’s point of view, focusing on her sumptuous experience in Paris, where she travels for her college junior year abroad and instantly immerses herself in haute couture. Surrounded by a plenitude of Givenchy and marrons glaces, Yvonne soon marries Adhéaume de Courcy, whom she characterizes as a “spendthrift, unloving, snobbish popinjay.” The marriage contract is simple: his title for her money. Meanwhile, Yvette’s success as a miracle-working nun in Jericó, Colombia, is revealed in a series of letters sprinkled throughout, which include details of Yvette’s amorous friendship with a fellow nun. Yvonne is also romantically interested in women, and White elevates his delicious descriptions of Yvonne’s lecherous thoughts about a sorority sister with notes of Yvonne’s mature self-awareness. Bombshell revelations abound when the narrative reaches its boiling point, which White handles with aplomb. Equally tender and salacious, White’s deeply satisfying character study demonstrates his profound abilities. Agent: Peter Straus, RCW Literary Agency. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

03/01/2020

After winning the 2019 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, White, famous for gate-crashing the literary scene with powerful novels about class, gender, and same-sex love, returns with the story of twin sisters mired in 1950s Texas. But not for long; they quickly depart, one for life with the Parisian nobility and the other for a convent, with repercussions lasting over decades. With a 45,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

★ 2020-05-19
Twin girls from Texas oil money go on to fabulous destinies.

“We moved as far away from Daddy as we could get—to Colombia in my case, to Paris in yours. Neither of us lives in our native language. I’m called Sister and you’re called Baroness. We never returned to Texas.” The National Book Foundation gave White a lifetime achievement award in 2019 and his latest book might be seen as a fun thank-you gift to readers. Though this high-spirited confection is something of a departure for an author known as a cultural critic and chronicler of contemporary gay culture, it's steeped in White’s ironic worldview and mines both his well-known obsessions (France, the French, their language) and lesser-known ones (Catholicism, convent life, the path to sainthood). And, come to think of it, there are plenty of gay and bi characters, and really eloquent descriptions of genitalia. “Our mother had named us out of a movie fan magazine, Yvonne and Yvette, but she was so ignorant she said our names “Why-Von” and “Why-Vet”…We were 14 and real Texas beauties with our blond hair, tiny ears, long legs, and high breasts, though our...mother made us cover them up with extra-large blouses." After their mother died and their father remarried, "All that changed under Bobbie Jean. She made us say our names in the proper French way and corrected our old relatives who mispronounced them—'I’m sorry,' Bobbie Jean said, 'but we’re not that country.' " By the time the girls’ story ends in far-flung corners of the globe with both high crimes and miracles to their names, they are certainly not country anymore. Narrated by Yvonne with long letters from Yvette, including cameos by Givenchy, Audrey Hepburn, and Jacqueline Bouvier, the novel brims with wit and style.

Proust meets John Irving in this grand and delightful comedy of manners.

Kirkus Reviews

Edmund White's narrative brilliance ... give[s] us the divinely well-told tale of identical twins… The rocket fuel that propels these abrupt plot twists past the slightest suspicion of implausibility is the author's trademark narrative virtuosity and high-octane erudition.” —New York Times Book Review

“A stunner about the secrets and dreams that bind two very different women.” —AARP

“Darkly whimsical…White skillfully invites readers into an organized mess of a world filled with equal parts deceit and desire.” —The Associated Press

“White's 28th book wraps his renowned erudition in a package of high-spirited family weirdness and narrative fireworks. Magnifique!” —People Magazine

“The pagan and the saintly contend in this audacious new novel by Edmund White whose sympathy for his Texas-born characters radiates like a kind of blessing through their myriad adventures- sacred as well as secular, and always sensuously alive.” —Joyce Carol Oates

“At once funny and moving, this is a ribald novel of the miraculous-a comic but searing exploration of sin and envy.” —John Irving

“Beautiful sentences spill off the page. Readers will delight in White's marvelous asides, characteristically exact vocabulary, and metaphors that make the reader smile… White has written a double first-person coming of age story replete with sex, dazzling wealth, secrets, and aspirations.” —New York Journal of Books

““In this stylish, witty novel from the esteemed author, the Crawford twins take very different turns from their East Texas upbringing: One becomes a Parisian socialite, the other a Catholic saint.” —New York Post's Required Reading

“Like a waltz that goes out of control, this is a wild, dizzying, joyful romp. A Saint from Texas is a daring and exuberant novel in the spirit of Tristram Shandy, but it is also a brilliantly observed story about how we find ourselves by losing ourselves, about family bonds and how the harm done to us can warp us into something new. I loved it.” —Ann Beattie

“A literary firecracker… A Saint From Texas does a wonderful job exploring how siblings relate to each other and how they rely on each other to navigate the world. It's a dramatic departure from White's previous novels, but it's just as elegantly crafted as its predecessors. White writes with a deep empathy for his characters in prose that's both playful and self-assured; the result is another brilliant accomplishment from one of one of the country's most indispensable writers.” —Texas Observer

“Exploring the complexities of sin, passion and love-both human and divine-Edmund White spins a tale of two Texas sisters whose destinies could not be more dissimilar… A Saint From Texas is alive with desire and rich with history, and White's love for his characters is infectious.” —Bookpage

“A mesmerizing sensual history of identical twin sisters who leave their booming Texas oil town for Paris and a Colombian convent…Bombshell revelations abound when the narrative reaches its boiling point, which White handles with aplomb. Equally tender and salacious, White's deeply satisfying character study demonstrates his profound abilities.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Steeped in White's ironic worldview… A Saint from Texas brims with wit and style. Proust meets John Irving in this grand and delightful comedy of manners.” —Kirkus, Starred Review

“Sumptuously imagined…In this gorgeously appointed novel, an elderly Texas belle who became a French baroness tells her story and that of her identical twin, whose abuse by their father set her on a spiritual path.” —Shelf Awareness

“One of our most interesting, serious, and mischievous writers.” —Lorrie Moore

“One of the three or four most virtuosic living writers of sentences in the English language.” —Dave Eggers

“Edmund White has three voices. First there is the storyteller: relaxed, conversational, an anecdotalist, an inspired flaneur. Then there is the poet: on every page there lies in wait a metaphor of startling precision, an image that holds and reattracts the eye. And then there is the laic philosopher, who observes human life from the highest attitudes, held aloft by vast infusions of erudition and experience.” —Martin Amis

“Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction "for his honest, beautifully wrought, and fiercely defiant books." —PEN/Saul Bellow Award

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