The Sundial
Across its three seasons, the HBO show The White Lotus keeps us gripped, episode after episode. Set in a fictional luxury resort chain, each season takes us to a different, idyllic locale — Hawaii, Italy, Thailand — and invites us into the lives of guests and staff across one fateful week. We meet rich heiresses, dysfunctional families, con men, cheats, and the White Lotus employees, who have to be all smiles all the time. The White Lotus brings us vicarious pleasure as we watch seemingly picture-perfect holidays implode, discover the dark underbellies of characters’ lives, and hope that some of the terrible people get what they deserve. They rarely do.
While watching The White Lotus, I’m reminded of books that scratch the same itch. A classic tale of money, mayhem, and murder in a summer idyll is Patricia Highsmith’s thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley. Written in the 50s, Ripley follows a young man who gets an all-expense-paid trip to Italy, hired by a father to track down his wayward son. In Italy, Ripley gets a taste of the good life and decides to do his best to never let it go, which means resorting to lies, secrets, and violence.
Expertly plotted and suspenseful, Ripley is a cat-and-mouse thriller that is equally a fascinating character study, one that considers class, identity, and the possibility of reinventing yourself in a place where no one knows you.
What draws us to these gruesome stories? Alexis Schaitkin’s Saint X is concerned with this question. The book begins in a luxury resort on a nameless Caribbean island, where our protagonists are a white American family. In the last days of their vacation, the eldest daughter, Alison, vanishes. Her body is found days later. Two black employees at the hotel are accused of her murder, but the evidence is thin, and they are both released. Alison’s younger sister grows up shaped by the grief, trauma, and mystery of Alison’s death. When she runs into one of the accused, years later, they strike an uneasy friendship, attempting to unravel the truth of what happened to Alison. Saint X unfolds hypnotically, a polyphonic tale of the reverberating effects of one night. It’s not just the story of a missing girl but an examination of what draws us to those stories in the first place.
But I’m not only gripped by The White Lotus; I’m also often laughing — at its satirical take on wealth, privilege, and power. I think of Shirley Jackson’s The Sundial as a close companion. It doesn’t take place at a resort, but in a large mansion. Mrs Halloran inherits the Halloran House after the death of her son (and some in her family are sure this was a result of a calculated murder). We’re introduced to the inhabitants of the house — her extended family, the staff, and governesses — when one of them announces she has had a vision: the ghost of the deceased has told her the apocalypse will soon be upon them, and only the inhabitants of the House will survive. The Sundial reads like a macabre comedy-of-manners, the family’s daily quibbles unfolding against the backdrop of strange omens and the looming threat of annihilation. Shirley Jackson’s acerbic wit is so sharp and unexpected — there’s such delight in reading about a group so dysfunctional and full of mutual dislike.
Perhaps you will pick up one of these books to add a thrill to your own vacations. To quote the famous fictional detective, Hercule Poirot, when he finds himself at a beach resort: “It is romantic … It is peaceful. The sun shines. The sea is blue. But you forget, Miss Brewster, there is evil everywhere under the sun.”
The author is a writer and illustrator.
Piqued is a monthly column in which the staff of Champaca Bookstore bring us unheard voices and stories from their shelves.