Audiobook Review: SAINT X by Alexis Schaitkin

Title: SAINT X

Author: Alexis Schaitkin
Read: May 2020

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟 1/2

Book Description:

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.

What attracted me to this book:

SAINT X was such an unexpected reading pleasure for me – it came up as “new on audio” on my library website and I clicked on it on a whim. With a hold that was estimated to come through around Xmas, I did not expect to get to it any time soon, but it came through early and here I am!

My musings:

A young girl’s death on a Caribbean tourist island has lasting consequences for those around her, in particular her sister Clare and the young men who were last seen with her. Due to lack of evidence, the cause of her death has never been explained.  The story follows adult Clare, who becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened on that fateful holiday.

Even though the story started like a traditional type of mystery, it was instantly obvious to me that the author has a real flair for social critique, examining the motives of her rich cast of characters and exposing their most innermost thoughts and flaws for the world to see. I loved the way she achieves this by including snippets of different characters’ lives into the narrative, all of whom have had some contact with the victim prior to her death. Each snapshot tells us a lot about these peripheral characters, also adding a piece of the puzzle to discover the real Alison. Photographic detail and the courage to lay bare some of our most shameful assumptions and habits make this tale roll out in almost cinematographic fashion in front of the reader’s eyes. For me, the focus was not on the mystery of Alison’s death, but on the effects of a violent death on those whose lives she had touched, in particular her little sister.

There are many interesting themes that run like threads through the story: racism, the effects of tourism on a remote paradise, loss of innocence, privilege, coming of age, the aftermath of trauma and the lasting consequences for those involved. I was glad that I chose the audio book version, because here the slow burn of the story really worked, especially with the rich cast of narrators, who each brought their own magic to the story.

Summary:

I think that SAINT X will appeal to readers who appreciate a character study as much as a slow burning mystery, because to me the mystery component took a backward step here, which made the book unique and interesting. It made what could have been a standard, run-of-the-mill mystery into something so much more, and I really enjoyed the journey. The author’s descriptive writing was a real treat, her honesty and social critique refreshing and thought provoking, and her characters life-like and well rounded. I really look forward to reading more from this author in future.