Saint X

Repercussions. One key event has repercussions in the many lives presented by Alexis Schaitkin in her debut novel titled, Saint X. At the end of the Thomas family’s vacation on a Caribbean island, eighteen-year-old Alison disappears and is found dead, changing forever the lives of her parents and her seven-year-old sister, Claire. Schaitkin carries readers along with a plot and multiple narrators weaving forward and backward in time as we learn what happened from various points of view. Claire is the novel’s protagonist, and her life has become consumed with learning what really happened to Alison and what her big sister was really like. Beneath the plot level, Schaitkin delves into issues of white privilege, racism and class differences. Through the impact of Alison in life and death on a number of minor characters, we see the repercussions of one person’s life on many others. The examination of multiple lives takes patience, but close readers will emerge from this novel with a heightened sense of the impact of any single event on multiple lives, for better or for worse, but certainly forever. Rating: Four-star (I like it) Click here to purchase Saint X from amazon.com.