POLY. What a cracker!

Could POLY, Paul Dalgarno’s polymorphously perverse debut novel, be in pol position for one of the most pleasing reads published in the present pandemic.? Probably.

POLY plots the polyamory of Chris and Sarah Flood, married with two children, who have decided to open up their relationship, after suffering a sojourn in their conjugal life.

Sarah has taken to multi partnership with gusto, Chris less so, although he has started a romantic relationship with Biddy, a polydactyl theatrical who enjoys hugs and humps in equal measure.

Sarah’s flings are trysts of wanton abandon, latex lax, a wayward wind storming her out of domestic doldrums. Chris’s relationship with Biddy takes the more romantic route.
In any case, their relationship remains revolved around their children, and their new life of polyamory presents problems and challenges with rotating parenting. It also creates tensions with friends, acquaintances, and work colleagues.

POLY is polymerous, beginning like an A grade erotic rom-com, a Four Flings and a Fingering, as you were, and ending in thriller mode, an every parents’ nightmare scenario.

Dalgarno is disarmingly adept at depicting his inner city dwellers facing self esteem issues as they confront the twilight of their youth and try to reign in their renegade responsibilities.

Polyamory, as freeing as it may be philosophically, carries its own responsibilities, pitfalls, and compromises, and, as his funny, honest, and nimble narrative illustrates, is never quite free of the pangs of jealousy and rejection.

Erect me don’t reject me is one of Chris’ silent, plaintiff cries to his promiscuous spouse. “She was looking for me but didn’t know it, had to go through the process of elimination with every other man on the planet.”

But then, as Sarah so eloquently opines, “People in glass houses should not throw moss and every cloud has a silver bullet.”

POLY by Paul Dalgarno is published by Ventura Press.