When the Thomas family, eighteen-year-old Alison and her seven-year-old sister, Claire, visit Saint X with their parents, they have no idea how this Caribbean holiday will irrevocably alter their lives. On the last night of their vacation, Alison disappears, and then turns up dead on a nearby cay.
This event sets Alexis Schaitkin’s debut novel Saint X in motion.
Looking back, the things I remember most clearly from the days after Alison went missing and before she was found are strangely inconsequential. For example, I remember the hunger I experienced on that first day when my parents forgot about breakfast and lunch, and how I felt sorry for myself in that banal way any child feels sorry for herself when she finds herself overlooked in a flurry of attention devoted to her older sibling.
Although Clive and Edwin, two men who work on the resort, are questioned about Alison’s disappearance, they are never charged and the circumstances of Alison’s death remain a mystery. Many years later, Alison is working at a publishing house in NYC when she gets into a cab driven by Clive and that chance encounter sends her spiraling into the past, desperate to connect to the sister she didn’t really know.
While not a thriller, Saint X does read like one in many ways. Alison contrives a way to meet up with Clive again and then essentially starts stalking him until she orchestrates yet another chance encounter. She is convinced Clive can answer all her questions about Alison. Her obsession with her sister’s death and with Clive himself takes over her life. She cuts herself off from her friends, loses focus at work and spends her time listening to the audio diaries her sister kept as a teenager.
Schaitkin layers Claire’s journey with Clive’s story – one of abandonment and longing. We learn of his early life on Saint X, and his childhood friendship with Edwin, who grows into a gregarious man who knows how to flatter the tourists at the resort and make double the amount in tips. We see Alison through Clive’s eyes, a skewed portrait of a teenager on the cusp of understanding her tremendous power.
While the novel is certainly about Claire’s quest for understanding, this is also a book about privilege, fate, grief and family. When Clive finally reveals what he knows (or doesn’t know) about Alison, Claire realizes that the details “had very little to do with me.” That’s one of the brilliant observations in Schaitkin’s novel. You can’t possibly know everyone’s story – not even the people closest to you.
This is a beautifully written book, one to savor, and I highly recommend it.
The Ludic Reader 