Reviewed by Kate

Looking for Dolphins


Looking for Dolphins concerns a man's pilgrimage to the holiday house of his childhood. He takes his girlfriend with him, and finds the mix of past, present and future images overwhelming and at times disturbing. He remembers the dolphins he watched for as a child, and how they represented all his hopes and dreams.

There's a good story here, treated with care, of one of those episodes in the life of a grown-up when seeing the past as it really was, without the filters of family ties and childhood illusions, suddenly becomes possible. The main character sees a brick wall as fake, for the first time, and he prowls around the house, now inhabited by strangers, and these overlapping impressions are dealt with quite well.

Having said this, however, I think that the author sometimes tries too hard to cram his language with meaning. For instance, calling the female character, by turns, "my future", "my lover", "my love", "my best friend", is distracting, and reduces the woman to an idea, a symbol, rather than a breathing character. A single thumbnail characterization could be forgiven, but I think that giving her a name and showing her as lover and best friend through one or two interactions would carry more weight. This tendency toward a sort of literary shorthand, as in "my trained eye", "a moment of reckless passion", trying to tell too much with too few words, departs from the voice of the narrator and also detracts from the music of the piece.

Because, despite these quirks, there is music: the beach is well-described, and the dolphins are a beautiful metaphor, illustrated by the last few paragraphs of the story. So, apart from the authorisms, I enjoyed the story, and with a little tightening of the voice, it could be a very good story.

Story by � Mick Flynn

Reviewed by � Kate

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