Saint X: I stepped out of my reading comfort zone and this was the result

What is this about?: Years after her sister is murdered, Claire runs across Clive, one of the men accused of killing her sister. And then begins to stalk him and somehow this morphs into a coming-to-terms story for them both.

What else is this about?: This is a coming to terms story with death and the ramifications thereof for them both. It’s also about race and the choices that led them both to where they are, but honestly a lot of that wasn’t articulated enough for me.

Blurb

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.

Saint X has  left me scratching my head a bit.

The author has a gift for lush, evocative descriptions – whether her characters are in Saint X, an holiday island where rich people go to savour their wealth and then pretend they’re there to get the “real” island experience as Claire’s family was the time Alison disappeared, or whether the action is in the city, with Claire’s life slowly disintegrating because she’s stalking Clive for answers to her sister’s death and he just wants to live his life.

Claire and Alison are both thoroughly unlikeable characters. Alison is the kind of girl that everyone gravitates to, and thinks that making diary entries about how entitled she is, and how excessive her parents are for buying her a brand new car for her 16^th birthday makes her different to the self-absorbed people around her. Thing is, that’s all she does. She talks a lot, but we don’t know that she does anything else about this “wokeness” of hers.

Claire I felt loved and hated Alison in equal measure – loved her bc she was her big sister, and hated her for the hold she has over Claire even in death, even more so when Claire meets Clive. She proceeds to stalk him, and become friends with him in the creepiest way ever. The relationship continues, and she gets nothing of Alison’s death from him, I don’t think, but learns about him and he about her.

Everyone else in her life are pretty faceless in this book, even her parents, which highlights the isolation she feels, but unfortunately, Claire’s journey isn’t particularly interesting. We learn in the aftermath of this book that she began to change her life, and there’s an interesting story there too, but again, it’s not actually in the book so does me little good as a reader.

Clive is a worn down character, weary by his life and the decisions his made. His story is more interesting, learning about himself as he grew up in the shadow of the more popular friends around in him. He’s much like Claire was at a young age and now: forever in the shadow of someone else, and trying to break free, and as an adult he is still in the shadow of those popular friends who made growing up bearable, and who introduced him to Alison. They may come from different backgrounds, but in some ways they’re remarkably similar in other ways.

I just wish his story was in a more interesting book. Their relationship had potential, but again the one-noteness of it all was hard to get past, and to be honest, it was just odd: if someone I returned a phone to, suddenly started turning up at my favourite diner every time I was there, with what has got to be the flimsiest excuse, I would be suspicious rightaway. To Clive’s credit he is suspicious, but we only learn that when the relationship and the book is over and during the relationship, it’s just nothing. The point where this lost me was the awkward attempt she makes to kiss him. It’s aborted and it doesn’t go anywhere, but it made me wonder if the author knew what she wanted to do with this relationship and just stuck that in there for something to happen.

Both characters are given timelines in their past, allowing readers to learn more about the people they are. On Claire’s part, it just made Alison more unlikeable, and Claire frustrating as a character. Clive’s story is more interesting, and I do actually wonder if this might have been a better story had this been about Clive running into Claire and wanting to learn more about her.

This isn’t my normal type of book, so I wanted to try it and see what happened – the journey these characters were on. It’s an introspective book, with characterisation that doesn’t really evolve – this is the characters’ journey to the point where they realise they have to evolve, but unfortunately I have to admit, it’s not a particularly good journey. The author is a talented writer, but not one I’ll try again in any hurry.