A Saint from Texas cover art

A Saint from Texas

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

A Saint from Texas

By: Edmund White
Narrated by: Barbara Barnes
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £14.18

Buy Now for £14.18

Bloomsbury presents A Saint from Texas by Edmund White, read by Barbara Barnes.

From Edmund White, a bold and sweeping new novel that traces the extraordinary fates of twin sisters, one destined for Parisian nobility and the other for Catholic sainthood.

Yvette and Yvonne Crawford are twin sisters, born on a humble patch of East Texas prairie but bound for far more dramatic and tragic fates. Just as an untold fortune of oil lies beneath their daddy’s land, both girls harbor their own secrets and dreams—ones that will carry them far from Texas and from each other. As the decades unfold, Yvonne will ascend the highest ranks of Parisian society as Yvette gives herself to a lifetime of worship and service in the streets of Jericó, Colombia. And yet, even as they remake themselves in their radically different lives, the twins find that the bonds of family and the past are unbreakable.

Spanning the 1950s to the recent past, Edmund White’s marvelous novel serves up an immensely pleasurable epic of two Texas women as their lives traverse varied worlds: the swaggering opulence of the Dallas nouveau riche, the airless pretension of the Paris gratin, and the strict piety of a Colombian convent. For nearly half a century, Edmund White’s work has revitalized American literature, blithely breaking down boundaries of class and sexuality, and A Saint From Texas is one of his most joyous, gorgeously written, and piercing works to date.©2023 Edmund White (P)2023 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Coming of Age Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Destiny
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c

Critic reviews

Edmund White’s narrative brilliance ... give[s] us the divinely well-told tale of identical twins who set out to answer the question: Can Texas be transcended?... White’s miracle is how he manages to deliver an epic that covers five decades, several precisely observed cultures and a host of indelible characters in a little under 300 pages. ... White’s tale is exactly like a stroll through Le Jardin des Tuileries—if the garden had been planted with land mines instead of tulips… The rocket fuel that propels these abrupt plot twists past the slightest suspicion of implausibility is the author’s trademark narrative virtuosity and high-octane erudition.
The books by 80-year-old American novelist, memoirist and essayist Edmund White—honest, fierce and joyful explorations of love, sex and family—have been breaking boundaries and engaging readers for nearly 50 years. His latest whisks us from the hardscrabble Texas prairie to the streets of Paris and Columbia… a stunner about the secrets and dreams that bind two very different women.
Darkly whimsical…White skillfully invites readers into an organized mess of a world filled with equal parts deceit and desire. It is a world full of sinners and saints, one that asks us to question what turns some of us into one and some of us into the other.
The pagan and the saintly contend in this audacious new novel by Edmund White whose sympathy for his Texas-born characters radiates like a kind of blessing through their myriad adventures— sacred as well as secular, and always sensuously alive.
At once funny and moving, this is a ribald novel of the miraculous—a comic but searing exploration of sin and envy.
Beautiful sentences spill off the page. Readers will delight in White’s marvelous asides, characteristically exact vocabulary, and metaphors that make the reader smile… White has written a double first-person coming of age story replete with sex, dazzling wealth, secrets, and aspirations.
White’s 28th book wraps his renowned erudition in a package of high-spirited family weirdness and narrative fireworks. Magnifique!
“In this stylish, witty novel from the esteemed author, the Crawford twins take very different turns from their East Texas upbringing: One becomes a Parisian socialite, the other a Catholic saint.
Like a waltz that goes out of control, this is a wild, dizzying, joyful romp. A Saint from Texas is a daring and exuberant novel in the spirit of Tristram Shandy, but it is also a brilliantly observed story about how we find ourselves by losing ourselves, about family bonds and how the harm done to us can warp us into something new. I loved it.
All stars
Most relevant
Narrator mispronounces many words. Pausing inappropriately within sentences would indicate inability to scan, or perhaps that these sentences have not been even read before.
Poor preparation, but even poorer editing oversight.

Poor narration jarring.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.