The Starboard Sea

When I put down Amber Dermont’s “The Starboard Sea” I knew I had just finished a book that changed my life. That sounds like such a dramatic statement, I know, but it’s really true. Dermont’s characters resonated with me so much that I’m still mulling over the lessons I’ve learned from reading her book.

“The Starboard Sea” follows Jason Prosper, a high school senior who on the outside appears to live in the lap of luxury. His parents are outrageously wealthy, and he attends an elite private school filled with other privileged children. What Jason’s outward appearances don’t detail, however, is that he has just transferred to Bellingham Academy to deal with his best friend Cal’s suicide. The matter becomes even more complicated as readers discover that Jason and Cal explored their sexuality together, and could at times be classified as lovers.

Dermont’s detail of her characters’ strengths and struggles is outstanding. She doesn’t oversimplify any single character. It’s not as if Jason is just the kid who is gay and trying to deal with it. Instead, he’s a young man who is trying to discover just what his sexuality is, trying to deal with the responsibility he feels for his best friend’s death, trying to make himself stand out in a privileged life that has been predetermined for him, and trying to find the best aspects of life at a time when it seems as if the entire world is working against him.

Even Dermont’s minor characters are as well thought out as her protagonist. For example, Jason’s mother is a woman who has not worked a single day in her life, but has so many more problems than her “Real Housewives” appearance would suggest. She is a woman dealing with her husband’s infidelity, dealing with her own feelings of love lost with another man, and dealing with her son’s depression after losing his best friend. Dermont seamlessly puts readers into the lives and minds of her characters that you can’t help but find bits and pieces of each character’s story that have some correlation with your own.

This intricate character development is all set in an endearing seaside east coast town, the perfect location for Jason to lose himself in his love of sailing. Dermont’s description of Jason’s time sailing seems almost as therapeutic as being on the open water yourself. Ultimately it is Jason’s connection to sailing and the sea that help him discover himself at this pivotal time in his life.

I’m sure after reading this review I seem just overly dramatic and potentially groveling to Dermont and her work. I have to tell you, I’m just utterly in awe of this and can’t think of any other way to review “The Starboard Sea.” My jaw is still dropped, and I’m already diving into this a second time to discover new details and connections I may have missed the first go around.

This is an intense story about one young man's search to find the best path in life after a series of heartbreaking losses leave him struggling to differentiate the thin line between friendship and love and learning how to forgive himself.

Jason Prosper, a snarky eighteen year old whose grown up in a world befitting of his last name, has a love and natural talent for sailing. He's good looking enough and he's never lacked for anything whether it be girls, friends or material things but none of those have ever mattered much to Jason. He's always felt at home, sailing the seas with his childhood friend and crew partner, Cal, but when Cal commits suicide during their junior year at Kensington Prep, Jason is devastated.

Jason can't imagine life without Cal; they were as close as brothers, people often mistaking them for such. He spends the remainder of his school year and summer splitting his time between his homes in Maine and Manhattan, tormenting himself with memories of Cal. As the school year starts, Jason finds himself beginning his senior year on the island for misfit toys, otherwise known as Bellingham Academy, a third rate boarding school for rich kids.

At Bellingham, he runs into old acquaintances but it's here that he also meets Aidan, the girl with the boy's name and the fiery red hair. Aidan not only has a tortured past of her own, but she might be exactly what Jason needs in order to find his own starboard sea.

Together they begin an emotional and touching journey of shared secrets of the past and talk of forging a new future, one of hope and healing. Then a hurricane sweeps the New England coast leaving even more destruction in Jason's young life and uncovering a heart wrenching secret in the process.

By the time graduation rolls around, Jason will have earned his education but it will have little to do with academics and more to do with learning who his real friends are, what it means to be free of oneself and who it is he really wants to be.

Jason, Cal and Aidan are all the kind of characters you just want to hug. Forever. My heart ached for all three of them more than any of the other characters and I felt like if they'd each been loved properly as kids growing up, maybe they wouldn't have been so screwed up. They each seemed to pursue people and things who represented what they were looking for in their parents but didn't get. A void to fill. Some people do that with money, some use drugs, alcohol or sex. I would've loved to bring all home with me and just loved on them.

What's with boarding schools anyway? It seems like another way for rich parents to not have to deal with their kids to me which is just sad. Nannies first and then boarding schools. It's as if the children are just another accessory, another acquisition.