Saint X: A Novel

by Alexis Schaitkin Narrated by Various Narrators, Alex Hyde-White, Bailey Carr, Dana Dae, Dave Fennoy, Dean Gallagher, Denise Nelson, Ella Turenne, Josh Petersdorf, Kate Orsini

Overview

Alexis Schaitkin's stunning debut, Saint X, is a haunting portrait of grief, obsession, and the bond between two sisters never truly given the chance to know one another.

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.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Oyinkan Braithwaite

Any death of course creates aftershocks among those closest to the deceased, but we rarely spare a thought for those on the fringes. Schaitkin does, demonstrating in no more than a few pages each how Alison's passing affects her various satellites: her teacher, roommate, a random man on holiday, an actor, the girlfriend of the suspect and so on. The connections are faint, the domino effect crystal clear. All these sub-narratives dedicated to minor and major characters, chapters that do little to move the plot along, could easily have resulted in a novel that buckled under the weight of its structural ambitions, but Schaitkin pulls it off without a hitch…Saint X is hypnotic, delivering acute social commentary on everything from class and race to familial bonds and community, and yet its weblike nature never confuses, or fails to captivate. Schaitkin's characters have views you may not always agree with, but their voices are so intelligent and distinctive it feels not just easy, but necessary, to follow them. I devoured Saint X in a day.

Publishers Weekly

12/09/2019

Schaitkin’s unsettling debut plays with the conventions of the romantic thriller to comment on the uneasy relationship between working-class residents of a fictional island in the Caribbean and the wealthy American tourists who visit it. In 1995, a couple from a New York City suburb and their two daughters, adventurous college freshman Alison and cautious seven-year-old Claire, visit a resort on the island. Alison flirts with two workers at the resort, Clive and Edwin, and takes off with them nightly without her parents’ knowledge to visit a local club, where she dances, drinks, and gets high. One night, she doesn’t return, and her body is soon found on a nearby island. Though suspicion falls on Clive and Edwin, they are not charged with any crime. In present-day N.Y.C., Claire, who narrates much of the novel, recognizes Clive, now a cab driver, from the back seat of his taxi. Obsessed with learning what happened to Alison, she stalks him while neglecting her work and friends. As Claire embeds herself in Clive’s life, he grows increasingly wary, until he finally snaps and reveals what he knows about the final night of Alison’s life. As the novel gradually shifts to Clive’s point of view, Schaitkin subverts the other characters’ assumptions about the lives and intentions of strangers. This is a smart page-turner, both thought-provoking and effortlessly entertaining. Agent: Henry Dunlow, Dunlow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency. (Feb.)

From the Publisher

"'Saint X' is hypnotic. Schaitkin's characters...are so intelligent and distinctive it feels not just easy, but necessary, to follow them. I devoured [it] in a day."
–Oyinkan Braithwaite, New York Times Book Review

“Richly atmospheric, by turns coolly satiric and warmly romantic, Alexis Schaitkin’s brilliant debut novel Saint X imagines a chorus of voices in the aftermath of the alleged murder of a privileged American girl vacationing in an exotic Caribbean country. Part ’true-crime’ thriller and part coming-of-age novel narrated by the deceased girl’s younger sister, Saint X is irresistibly suspenseful and canny."
—Joyce Carol Oates

"Saint X, Alexis Schaitkin’s atmospheric new novel, is ostensibly about a young American girl who goes missing while on a family vacation in the Caribbean. But it is more than that. The book also unpacks timely social and cultural issues — about grief, truth, white privilege and our murder-as-entertainment culture.”
–Washington Post

"A smart, socially conscious thriller that will take you away."
–People Magazine, Book of the Week

“This debut novel is hypnotic, delivering acute social commentary on everything from class and race to familial bonds and community, and yet its weblike nature never confuses or fails to captivate.”
—New York Times, Editors' Choice

“This writer is fearless, and her gamble pays off. This killer debut is both a thriller with a vivid setting and an insightful study of race, class, and obsession.”
—Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW

"There’s one moment in every person’s life, posits Saint X, that will define the rest of it. For many in this novel, it’s the death of Alison Thomas, a teenage girl who perishes while vacationing with her family on a Caribbean island. The mystery remains unsolved until years later, when her sister Claire runs into one of the original suspects in New York and befriends him, hoping to piece together what happened to Alison."
—Entertainment Weekly

"One of the year's buzziest debuts."
—Bustle, The 22 Most Anticipated Books of February 2020

"Saint X is slightly miraculous. Funny, chilling, moving, and throughout, deeply intelligent. We follow Emily into the depths of her obsessive quest with fascination and, in the end, rise with her as she moves on. This is an utterly original and engrossing novel written with the surest possible hand."
—Christopher Tilghman, Author of Thomas and Beal in the Midi

“Here is a marvel of a book, a kaleidoscopic examination of race and privilege, family and self, told with the propulsive, kinetic focus of a crime novel. Brilliant and unflinching, Saint X marks the debut of a stunningly gifted writer. I simply couldn’t stop reading."
—Chang-rae Lee, Author of On Such A Full Sea

"Alexis Schaitkin's stunning debut novel is an examination of race, privilege, family and self as a teenage girl vanishes during her family’s luxury Caribbean vacation on the island of Saint X. Though the lives of the privileged tourists and the island locals are seemingly unrelated, in the aftermath of this single dramatic event, they’re inextricably bound to each other forever."
–Good Morning America, 20 Books We're Excited for in 2020

Library Journal - Audio

04/01/2020

An affluent American family's perfect Caribbean vacation takes a turn for the unthinkable when their college-aged daughter, Alison, goes missing and is eventually found dead. The family questions the local police's investigation as few suspects are identified and no charges are brought forth. Alison's death is devastating for her seven-year-old sister, Claire, who must navigate her formative years in the wake of tragedy. The loss of her sister, coupled with the lack of closure that accompanies an unsolved death, underscore Claire's life in innumerable ways. Years later Claire will hop into a New York City taxi and realize her driver is one of the main suspects in Alison's murder. Claire seizes her opportunity for the truth and devises a plan to get it. Schaitkin's debut novel is a slowly burning suspense story that feels like it will transform into a frenetic thriller but never quite makes it there. Alternating character perspectives can be a bit difficult to follow, but narration by Alex Hyde-White, Bailey Carr, Dana Dae, Dave Fennoy, Dean Gallagher, Denise Nelson, Ella Turenne, Josh Petersdorf, Kate Orsini, Melinda Wade, Prentice Onayemi, Ron Butler, Ryan Vincent Anderson, and Tristan Wright makes for an immersive listen and helps illuminate the novel's examination of privilege, race, and class. VERDICT Recommended for any fan of suspense, especially those who enjoy a deep dive into characters' emotions and motives.—Sean Kennedy, Univ. of Akron Lib., OH

Library Journal

02/01/2020

DEBUT Claire Thomas's sister Alison dies during a Caribbean family vacation. To seven-year-old Claire, college freshman Alison is everything she's not—beautiful, poised, popular. An omniscient narrator draws us into the story with a surveillance camera-like impassivity. When adult Claire slides into the NYC cab of Clive Richardson, one of the men suspected of killing Alison, she can't ignore the compulsion to discover the truth behind her sister's death. Schaitkin carefully inserts pieces of various characters' lives, gradually completing the jigsaw puzzle of the story for readers. As Claire surrenders to her obsession with Clive, she risks losing everything in pursuit of the answer. While point-of-view shifts may be confusing for readers struggling to orient themselves in the story, the richness of the characters makes the attempt worthwhile. Questions of race and privilege deepen the impact of the characters' struggle, emphasizing the societal norms each individual and every nation must address for equity to become more than a mission statement or campaign slogan. VERDICT Readers who enjoy a mystery with emotional depth will find this a compelling and impressive debut. [See Prepub Alert, 10/22/19.]—Julie Ciccarelli, Tacoma P.L., WA

JANUARY 2020 - AudioFile

Fresh voice talent Dana Dae leads a cast of 15 actors who deliver a cinematic atmosphere in this intricate story of a family that is vacationing at an exclusive Caribbean resort. While visiting, their 18-year-old daughter disappears and is found washed up on the beach two days later. The circumstances of her death are never solved. Seventeen years later the girl’s younger sister, portrayed by Dae, tries to make sense of her sister’s tragic death, and this is where the ensemble approach of the novel pays great dividends. The separate and distinct voices of college friends, the sisters’ mother, diary entries, and a handful of Jamaican-accented former resort employees deftly magnify the complex issues of race, class, and gender that come together in the heartrending conclusion. B.P. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2019-11-25
The death of a teenage vacationer on a fictional Caribbean island reverberates through many lives, particularly those of her 7-year-old sister and one of the workers at the resort.

"Look. A girl is walking down the sand.…As she walks, heads turn—young men, openly; older men, more subtly; older women, longingly.…This is Alison." A dangerous froth of sexual tension escalates around Alison Thomas, visiting Saint X from the wealthy New York suburbs with her parents and little sister, Claire. Schaitkin evokes her fictional resort with sureness—"the long drive lined with perfectly vertical palm trees," "the beach where lounge chairs are arranged in a parabola," the scents of "frangipani and coconut sunscreen and the mild saline of equatorial ocean." After the disaster, the focus shifts to Claire, who changes her name to Emily after her bereaved family moves to California but never escapes the shadow of the event. "I knew the exact day I outlived Alison. Eighteen years, three months, twelve days." When she moves back East for a publishing job in New York City, she crosses paths with one of the resort employees her sister was partying with the night she died. These men were exonerated in the matter of Alison's death, but Clive Richardson was arrested for selling pot in the process; after prison, his life is so devastated that he immigrates to Manhattan. After Emily gets in Clive's taxicab, her obsessive desire to know more about her sister's death—which, by now, the reader fully shares—consumes her life. The complex point of view, shifting among an omniscient narrator, Emily's perspective in first person, Clive's immigrant story in close third, plus brief testimonies from myriad minor characters, works brilliantly. Just as impressive are Schaitkin's unflinching examinations of the roles of race, privilege, and human nature in the long-unfolding tragedy. Setting the story in a fictional place, collaged and verbally photoshopped from real Caribbean settings, is daring, but this writer is fearless, and her gamble pays off.

This killer debut is both a thriller with a vivid setting and an insightful study of race, class, and obsession.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172155154
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	02/18/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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