Bradley Somer - Fishbowl

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Flawed but very good in parts

Trying a book like this with a quirky and amusing-sounding premise is always a risk. Sometimes they turn out to be very good, and sometimes they turn out to be pretty terrible. In my view, this is both, but with more of the good than the terrible.

This is really a book about the interwoven stories of a diverse group of residents of an apartment block, some of which are very well done. Ian the plummeting goldfish is incidental to much of the book and we only hear about him occasionally - which is just as well, because I found the sections involving Ian tedious, self-indulgent and nothing like as funny as they thought they were. I nearly gave up after two chapters, one involving Ian and the other an overblown and pretentious introduction to the building in which the stories take place, but I'm glad I didn't because there's a good deal here to enjoy.

It is hard to give even the smallest flavour of the stories without revealing more than I would have liked to know beforehand, but they are all humane, insightful and often rather touching. We get the minutiae of the characters' innermost thoughts, which are generally very well done and convincing. It reminded me a little of Richard Brautigan in places, and although Somer doesn't quite have Brautigan's depth of gentle, compassionate insight he does well in revealing the humanity, both noble and flawed, in his characters. I enjoyed a lot of it and some will stay with me, I think. This passage may give a flavour; Garth is climbing the stairs to his floor and stops for breath when a boy runs straight past him:
"This stairwell, he thinks, it's the centre of unadulterated loneliness and I'm in the middle of it.
How is it possible to barely know anyone in a world full of people? Garth wonders. How is it that no-one really knows me after thirty-seven years?....
That kid, he thinks, he just came and went. All I know is his skinny legs and his red Crushes and then he is gone. And what am I to him? A fat guy in a stairwell blocking the way to his computer games or his supper with his mom or wherever he was rushing to.
And now I'm gone.
Like I was never even here in the first place."

I found that rather affecting, and there are plenty of other good moments (many of them more uplifting than that one).

For me, this would have been a lot better without the goldfish and the conceits and authorial showing-off which surround him, but the bulk of this book is warm, well-written, humane and rather memorable. Well worth a try, I'd say.