A Saint from Texas by Edmund White

July 30, 2020

A Saint from Texas by Edmund White

Yvonne and Yvette Crawford are twins from a wealthy Texas country family.  After their mother dies, their father brings home a new wife who immediately moves the family to a prestigious neighborhood in Dallas.  The sisters attend the University of Texas in Austin, but follow very different paths.  Yvette devotes herself to a life of service to others in Colombia, while Yvonne sets a goal to move to Paris (that’s Paris, France, not Paris, Texas) and marry a titled aristocrat.

This book was a real slog to get through.  It’s pretty obvious early on that Yvonne and Yvette were going to lead very different lives.  From childhood, Yvette dedicated herself to helping the poor in Colombia, while Yvonne had more superficial interests such as social standing, trendiness, and fashion.  There is a strong contrast between the letters that the twins write to each other.  The beginning was good, I was interested in the characters, but then the author spent a lot of time educating the reader about the trivialities of French culture and society.

There are some truly disturbing aspects to this novel.  On the night of Yvonne’s society debut, their father locks Yvonne out of the twins’ bedroom, then rapes Yvette while Yvonne listens outside the door (Yvonne refers to this as Yvette’s troubled history with their father, not as a sick, criminal act).

Ultimately, there is no point to the book, and no plot.  The narrative focuses almost entirely on Yvonne with very little about Yvette except her letters and a couple of scenes of the father's incest.  Even Yvonne admits at the end of the book that she has led a useless life.