The Last True Poets of the Sea: literary art

By Sophia Doshi

The Last True Poets of the Sea by Julia Drake is art. Art isn't supposed to be pretty or colorful or literal—it's supposed to make you feel something. You know that something is art when you feel like laughing, crying, or throwing something valuable against your bedroom wall. You know that something is art when it makes your stomach hurt, or your heart heavy, or both at the same time. Art should make you love and grieve and feel. That's exactly what I experienced when I read this book. 

Not only that, but Drake's depiction of mental health, specifically panic attacks and depression, is fantastic. She uses just enough metaphors throughout the book—the main storyline of the book is a metaphor, comparing escaping then rediscovering a shipwreck to escaping then rediscovering familial stability. She describes and compares the mental health issues to different things to give readers who have not experienced panic attacks, depression, and some other mental illnesses a feeling of what the main character, Violet, and her little brother Sam are experiencing. 

The book is genius. It's brilliant, bright, and beautiful. And the CHARACTERS! And the STORIES! Everything is absolutely perfectly imperfect about the characters. Violet, with her overthinking, guilt, and panic attacks; Sam, with his OCD, depression, anxiety, and what I believe might be undiagnosed autism (although I am not completely sure about the latter; Liv, with her endless list of fears, her cigarette addiction, and too-perfect-until-its-not family life, and Orion, with his abundant ignorance and innocence that eventually came back to bite him in the butt. Julia Drake put her freaking soul into this book. It has now moved up among my favorite books of all time (alongside Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, and the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas). I recommend it to anyone looking for an escape from the monotony of daily life. 10/10.