Recommended by Entertainment Weekly, included in Good Morning America’s 20 Books We’re Excited for in 2020 & named as one of Vogue’s Best Books to Read This Winter, Bustle’s Most Anticipated Books of February 2020, and O Magazine’s 14 of the Best Books to Read This February!
Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister Alison vanishes from the luxury resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X on the last night of her family’s vacation. Several days later Alison’s naked 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. It’s national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved, but for Claire’s family there is only the sad return home to broken lives.
Years later, riding in a New York City taxicab, Claire recognizes the name on the cabbie’s licence, Clive Richardson – her driver is one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister. The fateful encounter sets her on an obsessive pursuit of the truth, not only what happened on the night of Alison’s death, but the no less elusive question of exactly who was this sister she was barely old enough to know: 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 uncover the truth, an unlikely intimacy develops between them, two people whose lives were forever marked by a tragedy.
Alexis Schaitkin’s Saint X is a flawlessly drawn and deeply moving story that hurtles to a devastating end.
Published 25 February 2020 | Publisher: Pan MacMillan Australia | RRP: AUD$29.99
Buy it at: Dymocks | Booktopia | A&R | Abbey’s | QBD
My Blurb (2 / 5 stars)
Absolutely loved the cover which would’ve been my primary reason to pick this book up, if not that it was sent to me by the publisher. I didn’t mind the blurb either but I’m not at all keen on psychological thriller. I love mysteries, crimes, thrillers, all of them but psychological thriller is one I’d usually avoid. Then again, the reason I usually avoid them (extramarital affairs etc) is absent here so I might as well give this one a go.
It opens oh so beautifully on a fictional Caribbean island beach where a family of 4 (including a teen daughter) have arrived for a holiday. The scene described was so lush, I fell in love with this spot. Maybe I just really need a holiday. However, other than this beautiful prose, I quickly ran out of patience with the novel.
The main perspective is Claire who was just 8 years old when her sister, Alison, disappeared and later found dead. She is now a young woman and an accidental meeting pushed her into a dark place from which we could not escape for some time. There were just too many parts with bits & pieces of others’ perspectives (those who were either at the island or is connected to Alison). I didn’t think it was that hard to follow the jump in time but at the end of the novel, I really had to question myself…
Saint X is slow; it is like long lazy waves breaking at the beach at which you could practically watch hypnotised all day. I don’t have all day though so it was hard to keep my focus. And I must say that I was rather disappointed with the ending. I felt that all my hard work to read through the novel did not pay off. However, there are those who truly enjoyed this novel too so maybe psychological thriller really is not my cup of tea.
Thanks to Pan MacMillan Australia for copy of book in exchange of honest review
About the author
Alexis Schaitkin’s debut novel, Saint X, is forthcoming from Celadon Books on February 18th, 2020, with seven foreign language editions to follow. Her short 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 Short Stories and 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.
Tien's Blurb 