Saint X

The final chapters contain the novel’s climax and denouement. Chapter 15 is the only section in which the narrative enters Clive’s first-person point of view. At the beginning of the chapter, Clive has not yet left Saint X and has not yet become worn down by the world of New York. It’s clear how much Clive’s world outlook changed over the years since this time. In his daily life on Saint X, Clive doesn’t always share Edwin’s disdain for the guests at Indigo Bay, whom they refer to as “Yankees.” When Edwin makes fun of guests for ordering Red Stripe, a beer produced in Jamaica, an altogether different island, Clive thinks, “But Jamaica’s not so far from here. I see their point” (293). He even defends the guests at some point, asking Edwin, “‘How can they do right by you?’” to which Edwin replies, “‘Maybe they can’t’” (293).

Clive compares himself to Edwin the same way Claire compares herself to Alison, highlighting the theme of Fractured Identities. Clive’s main discomfort in serving beach guests is that he feels observed by them: “It’s like I’m onstage, but at the same time, the audience is not even interested in me” (294). This recalls his thoughts about how his taxi passengers see him in Chapter 11. Part of this discomfort comes from how different he is from Edwin. When he responds to a guest by simply saying, “Thank you,” the guest’s “smile goes flat. He wants me to make some chat, but chat is Edwin’s thing” (293). In Clive’s life on Saint X, his closest friend is a powerful personality and presence, which Clive both follows and compares himself to.

When Clive notices Claire for the first time, it’s after a paragraph describing Alison and her scar—a way that she stands out as not just beautiful, but attention-grabbing. “On the sideline, the girl’s pale sister spectates. She does something funny with she finger, waving it through the air” (291). Later, he returns to this moment, saying first of Alison, “Everybody watches she. Edwin, the Yankee boys.” Then of Claire, “On the sideline, her sister spectates and does she tracing with she finger in the air. Poor little girl—such an odd child, and she sister so pretty” (299). Clive has a natural empathy for Claire, and this extends to their moment together on the bench.

In Chapter 16, as the narrative enter the present moment in New York once again, Clive makes a significant observation about how Edwin has affected his life: “Because of Edwin he’d lost everything, but without him, he would not even have had these things to lose. He needed Edwin. He could make no sense of his life without him” (316). Once again, this reads as very similar to Claire’s experience of growing up without Alison, and her observation that her life as she knows it could not have happened without Alison’s death; while Edwin directly steers Clive’s life, Alison imposes her power after death.

Chapters 17 and 18 consist of the novel’s denouement. Significantly, they shift time and place, leaving Claire’s winter in New York City with Clive in the past.

Chapter 17 lingers on the concept of storytelling, and brings Claire to a resolution about the Evolution of Grief Over Time. This parallels the final chapter of the book, in which the narrative returns to the omniscient point of view that started the novel. Between the first and last chapters, many insular perspectives on Alison and her death have been represented, and while they have provided many pieces of the story, they have also misled and misrepresented many aspects of the person and the events. This reflects Claire’s journey to search for what she assumed was “truth” and the ways that she was misled by her own yearning for a cohesive, straightforward story.

As illustrated by the disparate confessional passages that end many chapters, the truth is often much different than the sum of the experiences of and theories about individuals. In returning to the omniscient perspective, the novel arrives at a representation of truth that no single person can possess. As in Chapter 1, the narration floats in and out of the perspectives of characters, such as an adult Claire, who returns to Saint X, as well as Sara Lycott, who has become a grandmother. Ending in this way, on a note of resolution for the various character of the story who struggled for so long, affirms that the book’s focus was never truly about solving the mystery of Alison’s death but rather about tracing the arcs of the characters who lived out their lives in the aftermath of this event. The island too, is a character in this way, as Indigo Bay had to rebrand itself to lose its association with Alison’s death.

Though Saint X consistently subverts the expectations of the thriller genre, these final chapters underscore how the novel may have only been masquerading as a murder mystery. It’s significant that the story Claire ultimately understands about her sister is one that is not only mundane in comparison to a murder mystery, but one that was suggested from the very beginning by police: “Drinking and drugs, a reckless swim, a stupid accident” (333). Closure was available to Claire all along, after all, and so, as Claire realizes, “I fooled myself into believing I was after closure, when all I really wanted was never to let go” (333). Claire understands that the winter in which she become obsessed with answers was ultimately an expression of grief. That the novel reveals information to the reader piecemeal, in the way a true suspense novel might, this assertion at the end expresses that the mystery was never the point.