It’d be unfair to simply call The Last True Poets of the Sea a “coming-of-age story.” Though it may tick many of the cliched boxes, Drake’s novel is so much more. Not only did she and Sam spend their younger summers there, but the town folklore is centered on their great-great-great-grandmother – the sole survivor of a shipwreck (the Lyric) that has never been discovered.īut when Violet finds a group of friends (who turn into the first real friends she’s ever had) – but especially Liv Stone, a self-proclaimed amateur local historian who’s obsessed with finding the Lyric – she’s forced to analyze the person she’s becoming and find a way to make amends with her past as she continues forward. It’s only then, when Violet is sent to spend the summer with her uncle in Lyric, Maine, that she has enough clarity to look at herself and wonder, “Who have I become?” And it’s precisely this (mostly unasked) theoretical question that pushes her forward and helps define her time in Lyric. It wasn’t until she was caught with an older man in the hospital where her brother was being treated that the proverbial camel’s back broke. Until her brother Sam tried to kill himself, and everything came crashing down around her.
Sixteen-year-old Violet Larkin finds herself at the tail end of her so-called Year of Wild: a time when she threw caution to the wind and embraced all the danger, debauchery, and “good times” New York City could offer up.
The whole point is the adventure… The last true poets of the sea… People for whom discovery–like, the concept of the journey–is the treasure itself. It’s also bittersweetly nostalgic (and more than a bit terrifying for those of us with kids about to become teenagers). The Last True Poets of the Sea ( out now from Hyperion) is at once gorgeous, romantic, insightful, tender, and hilarious. After I finished the book, I closed it, stared at the cover, and hugged it close. It’s also the story of young queer love.Įven though I’m sure Drake didn’t have me (a 40-something cishet dad) in mind when she wrote the book, The Last True Poets of the Sea nevertheless found its way into my heart and warmed my entire soul. Julia Drake’s debut novel is about a teenage girl’s summer in Maine where – on an unexpected quest to uncover (and discover) the truth about her family’s history – she comes to terms with her own mistakes, her brother’s attempted suicide, her family’s dysfunction, and her own heart. I recognize that The Last True Poets of the Sea was not written with me in mind.
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