The Starboard Sea: A Novel [Hardcover]

Amber Dermont (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 28, 2012

“A rich, quietly artful novel that is bound for deep water, with questions of beauty, power and spiritual navigation as its main concerns. The title refers not to the right side of a boat but to the right course through life, and the immense difficulty of finding and following it.”--Janet Maslin, The New York Times

A powerful first novel about life and death, friendship and love, as one young man must navigate the depths of his emotions.

JASON PROSPER grew up in the elite world of Manhattan penthouses, Maine summer estates, old-boy prep schools, and exclusive sailing clubs. A smart, athletic teenager, Jason maintains a healthy, humorous disdain for the trappings of affluence, preferring to spend afternoons sailing with Cal, his best friend and boarding-school roommate. When Cal commits suicide during their junior year at Kensington Prep, Jason is devastated by the loss and transfers to Bellingham Academy. There, he meets Aidan, a fellow student with her own troubled past. They embark on a tender, awkward, deeply emotional relationship.

When a major hurricane hits the New England coast, the destruction it causes brings with it another upheaval in Jason’s life, forcing him to make sense of a terrible secret that has been buried by the boys he considers his friends.

Set against the backdrop of the 1987 stock market collapse, The Starboard Sea is an examination of the abuses of class privilege, the mutability of sexual desire, the thrill and risk of competitive sailing, and the adult cost of teenage recklessness. It is a powerful and provocative novel about a young man finding his moral center, trying to forgive himself, and accepting the gift of love.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Engrossing. . .Captivating and inspired. Jason is a fiercely likeable first-person narrator and romantic hero. The steady, restrained unmasking of Jason's history. . .is one of the novel's many achievements. But perhaps its greatest pleasure is the delight its characters take in the sea. Dermont's prose glides across the ocean. . .The language of sailing is lovely, both simple and elaborate, unexpectedly sexy and inexhaustibly metaphorical. Dermont writes about sailing with such precision and authority it's hard to believe she's not a salty old sea captain. She's as assured a writer as Jason is a sailor, coasting through the story with agility and grace. . .Dermont adeptly charts the fine calibrations of teenage love and shame and belonging." —Eleanor Henderson, The New York Times Sunday Book Review

 

"The Starboard Sea has permanently parted ways with the predictable. This is not a strictly prep school story. Its secrets are not tacked on or contrived. It is a rich, quietly artful novel that is bound for deep water, with questions of beauty, power and spiritual navigation as its main concerns. The title refers not to the right side of a boat but to the right course through life, and the immense difficulty of finding and following it." —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

 

"Dermont draws the tony campus life in The Starboard Sea with an insider’s hand. Dermont is a seasoned sailor, and readers in Annapolis will get a charge out of her exact, salty depictions of nautical rigging, knots, and gear. She also writes vividly about the strategy of sailing. One of the most refreshing aspects of the novel is Dermont’s candid treatment of race. Jason has been compared to Nick Carraway for his sober narration and keen sensitivity to the decadence of his peers, and in more than a few instances The Starboard Sea feels like a distant cousin of The Great Gatsby." —The Washington Post

 

"Vividly written. Dermont shows real spark in her sensual descriptions of sailing and her realistic depiction of the malevolent dynamics among sophisticated teens." —Booklist

 

"Dermont has laid out her fine and beautiful novel like the star constellations she describes and the reader must chart his or her own journey through a rewarding and challenging narrative." —America Magazine

 

"With unflinching wit, Amber Dermont examines the harsh vicissitudes of life, and though the worlds she creates are often unsettling places, her sense of detail always makes for a pleasurable read. There is a vibrant lucidity to her language, a daring music. . .Her characters are simultaneously able to articulate their pain, pass judgment on their own behavior, and pardon themselves for their transgressions." —Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize and Orange Prize winning author of Gilead and Home

"The Starboard Sea is a touching, beautiful and deeply wise novel, a hymn to the bittersweet glories of youth. You will be enthralled." —Justin Cronin, New York Times bestselling author of The Passage

"In this affecting debut novel, Amber Dermont reveals herself as a writer of striking and abundant talent, sounding the depths of her narrator through his actions, yes, but even more so through the rhythms of his mind, so that you truly feel as if you are inhabiting his life along with him." —Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Illumination and The Brief History of the Dead

"The Starboard Sea is a moving story of a young man coming to terms with who he is and what he has done. Dermont creates a powerfully real world. The sailing scenes are breathtaking, and the characters are complex and fully imagined. This is the debut of an enormously gifted writer." —Robert Boswell, author of The Heyday of Insensitive Bastards and Century’s Son

"Amber Dermont’s beautiful first novel explores just what it should: the dangers and joys of emergence into adulthood. Dermont has an extraordinarily observant eye and an elegant voice, and she illuminates particular aspects of her world—sailing, gender, class—with intelligence and compassion. Brava for this impressive debut." —Roxana Robinson, author of Cost and Sweetwater

"Amber Dermont has conjured up a preppy hall of mirrors, filled with hauntingly complex characters, grand houses and borrowed art, privilege and paybacks, and friendship touched with malice. The Starboard Sea blends propulsive mystery, lost love, and mournful coming of age into something layered, wise, and completely riveting." —Michelle Wildgen, author of But Not For Long and You’re Not You

 

"The Starboard Sea is a beautifully layered novel with an authenticity that takes the reader beyond the clichés of rich preppies and exposes a world that is vivid, compelling, and heart wrenching. With it, Amber Dermont establishes herself as an exciting new American talent." —Mark Jude Poirier, author of The Worst Years of Your Life and Goats

 

"In a series of seemingly effortless strokes, Amber Dermont's Starboard Sea has brought to life one of America's great literary outcasts. Set adrift in a storm of his own making, Dermont's Jason Prosper takes us on a journey into the darker depths of our human capabilities. Damaged and dangerous, by turns as despicable as he is lovable, Prosper's voyage is a treasure from a writer of dazzling gifts." —Holiday Reinhorn, author of Big Cats

 

"Amber Dermont illuminates the bizarre and insular world of boarding schools in her debut novel The Starboard Sea, and her young narrator, Jason Prosper, is captivating. His is a unique voice, searching and full of heart. The Starboard Sea is sharp, funny, smart, and vastly entertaining.” —Victoria Patterson, author of Drift (Story Prize Finalist) and This Vacant Paradise

About the Author

AMBER DERMONT received her MFA in fiction from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, including Dave Eggers’s Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005, Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope: All-Story, and Jane Smiley’s Best New American Voices 2006. A graduate of Vassar College, she received her Ph.D. in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston. She currently serves as an associate professor of English and creative writing at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia and is also the author of the story collection Damage Control.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (February 28, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780312642808
• ISBN-13: 978-0312642808
• ASIN: 0312642806
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #171,478 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Amber Dermont is the author of the novel, The Starboard Sea, and the short story collection, Damage Control, both forthcoming from St. Martin's Press. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Amber received her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Her work has recently appeared in American Short Fiction, Crazyhorse, Open City, Tin House, TriQuarterly, Zoetrope: All-Story and the anthologies Best New American Voices, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Worst Years of Your Life and Home of the Brave: Stories in Uniform. She is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and currently serves as an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 66 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Fine writing, troubling characters - 3++ December 6, 2011

By Blue in Washington TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I had some difficulty analyzing this coming of age story. First time author Amber Dermont spins a good story--much of this one episodic and in narrative. By that I mean, the book has a good flow and evokes the setting well. There are some wonderful passages about sailing, the ocean, nature, etc., which are clearly subjects that the author knows well and loves. Where I had some issues with the book was in its characters and overall message.

This is the tale of very wealthy--spoiled rotten, in some cases--mostly Waspy, prep school kids, often acting badly. Secondarily, it is the also the story of the parents who have spawned these kids and by their own bad behavior and criminal deeds have launched a successor generation that is likely to be more toxic than their own. So how to you generate sympathy for this kind of character? Even the book's protagonist, Jason Prosper, is just barely an exception to the generally obnoxious group that he hangs out with.

My second qualm with the book is how it raises some heavy duty subjects--coming to terms with being gay, suicide, bullying, murder/manslaughter, racism, corporate fraud, abetting serious crime by persons of authority, etc. and never really resolves any of them with any finality or sense of justice. It may well be that the author's message is that none of these issues/problems/criminal behaviors would have been resolved successfully in the time period (1980s), but that's a bit hard to swallow, even in that go-go period, even with the privileged group that is the focus of the story.

This book may have started out as a straightforward 80s coming of age story, but with the introduction of the very serious themes mentioned above, it became something quite different--much darker and much more difficult to bring to conclusion. For all of its problems, the writing in "The Starboard Sea" is insightful and even quite beautiful at times. This is an author to watch.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Polished prose wasted on contrived plot March 5, 2012

By TChris TOP 50 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

The Starboard Sea tries to do many things and doesn't fully succeed at any of them. Amber Dermont's assured writing style kept me reading to the end, but her high quality prose is largely wasted on a contrived plot. I made no intellectual or emotional connection to the story or any of its characters. The novel's first half is predictable and dull while the rest is only moderately interesting, ultimately leading to the sort of blockbuster revelations that are designed to shock. Unfortunately, since Dermont didn't convince me that the story or characters were real, the revelations did not have their intended effect. To the extent that the novel illustrates the obvious truth that people with money and power often escape the consequences of their bad behavior, the lesson is less than profound. I give Dermont credit, however, for avoiding a happy ending that might have pleased readers while making the story even less realistic.

Having been expelled from Kensington Prep, Jason Kilian Prosper spends his eighteenth birthday driving his father's Cadillac to Bellingham Academy, a school that will happily forgive his transgressions provided his father contributes to the school's building fund. Before the sun sets, Jason has a moment with a beautiful girl who is staring into the ocean. The reader knows that Jason is destined to meet her again and that she will play a significant role in the novel.

Prosper is recovering (or not) from the death of his best friend and Kensington roommate Cal. Prosper feels guilt about certain circumstances involving Cal, the sort of machination authors create to add emotional heft to a character. When Aidan (the beautiful girl) says she'd like to be a photographer's light meter so she would "know for certain whether people were giving off light or taking light away," the author is again laboring to imbue a character with depth when, in the real world, Aidan's audience would fall down laughing at her preposterous comment. Only infrequently does any of the dialog in The Starboard Sea have the ring of realism.

In addition to being self-absorbed, Prosper is self-aware to a degree I didn't find credible. Teenage boys do not describe their own behavior as "careless in the most deliberate way." They do not say "I slept well that night because someone had been kind to me." They do not tell their friends at the end of the school year, "We've taken good care of one another." A teenage boy might say "I cared too much about everything" as a means of impressing a girl, but Prosper actually means it. For that matter, teenage boys do not look at a beautiful girl and think that her face has "a quiet authority" that says "I am not to be put on display" and they do not worry about the pressure prep school girls might feel "to pigeonhole themselves." Prosper's introspection and relentless self-analysis quickly becomes overbearing. This is a coming of age novel about a kid who already thinks like a forty-year-old.

A huge error of logic becomes apparent in the novel's final pages (I can't reveal it without spoiling one of the revelations) that shouldn't have made it past the first edit. The novel is otherwise cohesive and internally consistent.

Devotees of Hollywood gossip and/or sailing might appreciate this novel. Prosper loves to sail (except when he hates sailing) and knows all there is to know about wind, while Aidan knows more than most people need to know about Robert Mitchum. Fans of debutantes and old money prep schools might also be fascinated by the story Dermont tells. I felt distant from it; nothing drew me into Prosper's world. Although I'm normally a sucker for literary allusions, the attempt to draw parallels between Prosper and Herman Melville failed to resonate. Equally silly is an earnest discussion of racial sensitivity, complete with allusions to Hemmingway and Samuel "Chip" Delaney (a family friend of the novel's only black character).

I admired Dermont's writing style and appreciated her ability to set a scene. Readers who can set aside their skepticism about the authenticity of the story and characters, readers for whom strong writing is enough, will likely enjoy the novel more than I did. I hope Dermont writes another novel, one that is less contrived than The Starboard Sea, because I would like to give her another chance.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Debut novel about class privilege and intrique March 2, 2012

By bookreader "Melanie"

Format:Hardcover

What I liked the most about this book was the setting at a New England boarding school for wealthy, privileged teenagers. Just reading about the advantages these students had due to wealth and their family name was pretty fascinating reading. However, we soon learn that no amount of money can protect you from dangers.

Set in the 1980's, this is the story of Jason Prosper. He transfers to Bellingham Academy after the suicide of his close friend and sailing partner, Cal. Blaming himself for his death, Jason is unable to forgive himself or move forward. Despite being unsure about his sexuality, Jason begins a relationship with Aiden, a mysterious and troubled girl who also attends Bellingham. With her he slowly begins to deal with Cal's death.

However, Jason soon faces another tragedy which pretty much leaves him questioning everything he knows. Meanwhile he is surrounded by irresponsible, often mean spirited students who have never really had limits. This added mix of "no consequences" due to the power of class privilege makes for one great read.

I really enjoyed this book, this is a gifted writer. It all felt very authentic and look forward to more from this author.