LAUGHING DOLPHINS

Two art school lovers go their separate ways to lead divergent—and convergent—creative lives in this literary novel.

Sandy Shellborn and Jeff Sanders meet at an art school in Boston in 1980. Sandy is a punk woman who turns heads for her bold fashion choices, but she has her doubts as to whether or not she will ever be a real artist. Jeff is a visionary who doesn’t follow the rules, his confidence in his own abilities never wavering. After a final, dispiriting evaluation, Sandy decides to walk away from art and pursue a graduate degree in library sciences. Her relationship with Jeff doesn’t last long following this decision. As Sandy tolerates a sensible career with a more sensible man, Jeff dives into the art world—which turns out to not always be quite as romantic or dignified as he imagined. (One early experience involves playing roadie on his much older girlfriend’s artist tour selling “Yoni Chalices.”) Over the next quarter of a century, Sandy and Jeff lead parallel lives, skipping between jobs and relationships, always in the same places and often around the same people. As they drift perpetually toward and away from art in its many forms, their mirrored paths prove that life is long, strange, and completely impossible to predict. Polo’s prose is smooth and descriptive, keeping readers grounded despite the novel’s nomadic drift between geographic settings: “A salty Virgin Island breeze played over his face and ruffled his pony tail as Jeff leaned against the rail of the magnificent sailing ship Mandalay and looked back at the coast of Virgin Gorda. The luminescent Caribbean Sea, full moon, and tropic isle looked exactly like the ad for this Windjammer Singles Cruise.” The concept is a fun one, and it will be rewarding for readers to see how the two protagonists grow over the course of the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s. While the chapters are generally compelling on their own, the book lacks a central tension or conflict that will pull readers forward. It won’t be long before the audience will begin to wonder what exactly it’s all building toward, and the answer—when it finally comes—doesn’t quite justify the journey.

An often intriguing but somewhat directionless tale about aging and art.