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Celine Saintclare is of English and Caribbean descent and was born and raised in Buckinghamshire, England. She spent the majority of her early life training to be a ballet dancer, and filling notebooks with stories and poems. Saintclare is inspired to write about the pain and beauty of navigating life as a young woman today, and about people whose lifestyles defy mainstream societal values. Her debut novel, Sugar, Baby (Bloomsbury, January 9, 2024) is a bold look at high-paid sex work in the age of the Internet.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
London. Paris. Miami. Rome. Caribbean upbringing. Religious guilt. Womanhood. Friendship. Beauty. Money. Sex work. Danger. Adventure. Self-realization. You'll love it or hate it.
On your nightstand now:
I'm alternating between The Stranger by Albert Camus and Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. I picked them up from the English book section of a Virgin store in Marrakech.
Favorite book when you were a child:
For years I couldn't fall asleep without listening to The Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton. I loved Jacqueline Wilson: Sleepovers; Best Friends; The Illustrated Mum; The Bed and Breakfast Star; Secrets; Double Act; The Diamond Girls. I could go on and on forever; I had them all. I loved the writing style, the vividness of the characters, and the drama of their worlds. When I was about eight years old, I stayed up late every night reading a series of novels about a little girl who had a magical unicorn. Eventually, my mum had to confiscate the books so I would go to sleep. I wish I could remember what they were called.
Your top five authors:
I've narrowed it down to eight: Anaïs Nin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lisa Taddeo, Bernardine Evaristo, James Baldwin, Oscar Wilde, Angela Carter, Eve Babitz. All formative and influential writers for me.
Book you've faked reading:
Almost everything I needed to read for school. I'd just look them up on SparkNotes before the exams.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Everyone should read Three Women by Lisa Taddeo. The interior lives of different women as it pertains to desire, romance, and emotional repression will always be fascinating to me. I was absorbed in this book from beginning to end. I could hear the women's voices in my head and feel what they were feeling as I read each sentence.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I would never buy a book just for the cover, but I am more likely to buy it if it's pink.
Book you hid from your parents:
One of the girls at school had a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey and everyone got a turn to take it home for a couple of days. I don't know what all the fuss was about, to be honest with you. It's more funny than it is sexy, but it felt so naughty and forbidden at the time. I think I kept it hidden in my underwear drawer.
Book that changed your life:
Henry and June by Anaïs Nin. Also The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I never related to much of what I read in books until those two. I think they're both very sensual and romantic writers and very introspective. And they search for muses and ideals, just like me.
Favorite line from a book:
"She says she is aware of the irony of being a medical examiner who smokes, but that for all the blackened lungs she's seen, it is more disturbing to open the chest cavity of a veteran and find that it is pristine." I think about this quote from Luster by Raven Leilani a lot. It gives me the courage to drink, smoke, and get tattoos. The idea of leaving a pristine corpse behind is a lot scarier to me than the idea of dying.
Five books you'll never part with:
I have a signed copy of The Guest by Emma Cline, which is pretty cool. It's one of those books I couldn't put down until I got to the end, and I love books that give you that. Other than that, I don't have any physical books I wouldn't part with. I've moved around a lot and left books everywhere I've been. There are a few books I've bought a couple of times over the years because I've lost the original copies. Actually, I wouldn't ever part with my first hardcover copy of my book Sugar, Baby. It's got notes and annotations from where I've taken it to readings. Lots of memories.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
I was obsessed with the short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald when I was younger. I'd love to discover those for the first time again. My favourite is "The Offshore Pirate." My favourite lines are Ardita's words about courage and faith in herself: "My courage is faith--faith in the eternal resilience of me--that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high, and my eyes wide--not necessarily any silly smiling. Oh, I've been through hell without a whine quite often--and the female hell is deadlier than the male."