Reality Fiction: The Starboard Sea

Amber Dermott's The Starboard Sea begins to find its sea legs by about a third of the way into the novel - and that's because of two things: First, she is gradually making the protagonist and narrator, Jason (?) Prosper (funny name!) more likable. At the outset, he seemed a narcissistic spoiled prep-school brat, snarkily recounting the misadventures of his friends, his wayward course through a number of academies on the way toward a last chance prep school for extremely privileged kids; the kids he meets in his first days there engage in various forms of nasty and cruel behavior, and Prosper is swept along with the tide, sort of - but gradually Dermott lets him emerge as a character - I think she, too, is finding her sea legs over the course of these pages, as we learn the sad story of the death of his best friend, Cal, his estrangement from his father and his brother, and most of all we see his behavior change - as he reaches out to some of the isolates on campus. .How Dermott sustains this reach (nautical term) will determine the course of the novel - it will e important, I think, for Prosper to do something that is brave and defiant and not in his immediate self interest. Second thing I'm beginning to like about this novel is Dermott's detailed knowledge and information about sailing - far more than other novels in which sailing is an amusing recreation - here it's a sport and even a way of life (as it is for many I know in my R.I. town). The info she provide seems truly authentic to me, and it brings me into a world I really didn't know very well; I have to recall the first lesson in the first fiction-writing seminar I took in college, where Professor Joseph Whitehill, a novelist whose career foundered (nautical term) unfortunately, told us that the information in our stories (he read to us a lengthy and quite good story about flight) had to be accurate. I'll tell this anecdote in more detail in some other post - but I remember thinking at the time, who cares about that, I read fiction great stories, characters, language - the facts be damned. But of course he was right - authenticity brings the author authority and the work a grounding in reality, a grounding from which buildings can rise or flights can soar.