Saint X

Saint X, the debut novel by American author Alexis Schaitkin, was first published in 2020 by Celadon Books. In the winter of 1995, the Thomas family goes on a vacation to the fictional island of Saint X, in the Caribbean, and toward the end of their stay, the eldest daughter, Alison, goes missing and is found dead on a nearby cay. The novel follows Claire, Alison’s younger sister, and Clive, who was at first a suspect in Alison’s death, as their paths unexpectedly cross years later. While Claire seeks answers, Clive tries to repair the damage that Alison’s death caused in his life. While considered a thriller or suspense novel, Saint X subverts the common tropes of this genre by focusing on class and privilege and by having a principal character engage with those tropes directly. The book appeared on “best of” and “most anticipated” lists from Entertainment Weekly, Good Morning America, Bustle, Vogue, and O Magazine. The book was adapted for a 2023 Hulu series.

This study guide refers to the 2021 paperback edition.

Content Warning: This guide discusses the death of a child, sexual assault, and drug and alcohol abuse.

Plot Summary

The story begins in 1995. When 18-year-old Alison Thomas is found dead during a vacation with her affluent family on the Caribbean island of Saint X, many believe that she was murdered. Edwin and Clive, two Black men who live on the island, are seen with Alison the night she died, but they are not charged, and local police determine that they cannot rule out an accidental death.

Much of the book takes place many years later and alternates between Alison’s younger sister Claire’s perspective and Clive’s, as they each reflect on their lives and the impact of Alison’s death. Clive sorts through his upbringing on Saint X and his close friendship with Edwin, who often seemed to be the one directing Clive’s life. It was Edwin’s dream to move to New York City one day, but Clive always envisioned a beautiful and quiet life on Saint X. However, after he was suspected to be involved in Alison’s death, he was forced to leave his home and try to make a living as a cab driver in New York City.

In Claire’s narrative, after Alison’s death, the Thomas family returns home to New York and soon moves to Pasadena, California, in an attempt to find a fresh start. Once there, Claire starts to go by the name Emily, and she transforms from an antisocial, anxious child into someone who can make friends easily. After college, she gets a job as an assistant to an editor who specializes in thriller novels and moves to New York City, where she ultimately moves into an apartment in Flatbush—the same neighborhood where Clive lives.

Claire’s and Clive’s lives intersect one day when Claire gets into Clive’s cab and recognizes his name. Impulsively, she leaves her cell phone in the cab for him to find, and they meet up at a restaurant called the Little Sweet so he can return it.

From this point on, Claire becomes obsessed with finding answers to the mystery of her sister’s death. At first she surveils Clive from a distance, and then she befriends him, using her new name and a false backstory. She researches extensively to find out anything she can about her sister and her sister’s death. Claire isolates herself completely, and her compulsive behaviors from childhood return.

In Clive’s chapters, he describes his struggle to make ends meet in New York and his longing for home. Clive regularly sends money to Sara Lycott, the mother of his child on Saint X, until he learns that Edwin and Sara have gotten married. Even after this, Clive fantasizes about reconnecting with Edwin, but he never hears from him, and several years later, Edwin dies of AIDS.

Clive and Claire have dinner together at the Little Sweet most nights, and develop something akin to a friendship. They are both living isolated lives in New York City, and Claire begins to depend on her relationship with Clive. Claire loses her job after becoming consumed by her pursuit for truth, and that night she shares this with Clive. As he comforts her, she leans in to kiss him. When he leans away, she draws the word “never” in the air with her finger—a compulsive behavior from childhood. Clive recognizes this tic, and discovers who Claire really is. A few nights later, he returns to the Little Sweet and tells her the story of what happened between him, Edwin, and Alison on the night she died.

Clive reveals that after a night of smoking and drinking, he, Edwin, and Alison went to a place referred to as the cliffs. Alison passed out, and while she was asleep, Edwin and Clive had sex. They woke up to Alison looking down at them, and then she ran away. Alison had been fixated on Faraway Cay that night, claiming that she’d seen the woman from a folktale about it while she was swimming. Claire imagines that Alison must have returned to the resort after seeing Edwin and Clive together, and then decided to swim to Faraway Cay, where she slipped and fell into the waterfall at the cay’s center. Finally, Claire uncovers a hidden memory of the night Alison disappeared: Claire waking up late at night in the hotel room, and Alison telling her she was heading “far away.”

After this night, Claire never hears from Clive again. She moves to Charlotte, North Carolina, and creates a stable life for herself. She decides that her pursuit for the truth was really just a way to hold on to the past.

Many chapters throughout the novel end with a separate passage, written in the first person, each one from the perspective of someone tangentially connected to Alison, to Alison’s death, or to Clive Richardson. These are confessional in tone, often revealing information the person hasn’t shared with anyone. Toward the end, these sections offer key perspectives that shed light on what happened to Alison. Most notably, the blond boy with whom Alison flirts while on Saint X confesses that he saw Alison after Clive and Edwin were pulled over by police on the night she disappeared, making him the last one to see her alive. He reveals that he lied about this encounter to the police and purposefully shifted suspicion onto Clive and Edwin. This confirms Claire’s theory that Alison returned to the resort before leaving again on her own.