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A Novel
by Bradley Somer
Book Reviewed by:At turns funny and heartbreaking, a goldfish names Ian escapes from his bowl and, plummeting toward the street below, witnesses the lives of the Seville on Roxy residents.
A goldfish named Ian is falling from the 27th-floor balcony on which his fishbowl sits. He's longed for adventure, so when the opportunity arises, he escapes from his bowl, clears the balcony railing and finds himself airborne. Plummeting toward the street below, Ian witnesses the lives of the Seville on Roxy residents.
There's the handsome grad student, his girlfriend, and the other woman; the construction worker who feels trapped by a secret; the building's super who feels invisible and alone; the pregnant woman on bed rest who craves a forbidden ice cream sandwich; the shut-in for whom dirty talk, and quiche, are a way of life; and home-schooled Herman, a boy who thinks he can travel through time. Though they share time and space, they have something even more important in common: each faces a decision that will affect the course of their lives. Within the walls of the Seville are stories of love, new life, and death, of facing the ugly truth of who one has been and the beautiful truth of who one can become.
Sometimes taking a risk is the only way to move forward with our lives. As Ian the goldfish knows, "An entire life devoted to a fishbowl will make one die an old fish with not one adventure had."
The character development is skillfully executed, running the gamut from somewhat pathetic to cheerfully happy, occasionally bringing the reader to the point of sadness, then on to laugh-out-loud moments. It all made me wonder about my own neighborhood where you see folks going to work, coming home, never really knowing each other except for an occasional wave...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by First Impressions Reviewers).
Fishbowl is set in a high-rise apartment building.
The contemporary apartment building has evolved over hundreds of years to its current avatar, sleek structures fashioned with high-tech materials and serviced by powerful elevators.
It is believed that the first apartment buildings were built by the Romans two thousand years ago. These multi-story structures were called insulae (pronounced insul-eye) meaning islands, because they took up a lot of space equivalent to entire city blocks. These apartments were crafted from unforgiving materials such as timber and mud so fires and collapses were common. The rich continued to live in separate houses while the poor rented these apartment spaces from wealthy proprietors. Bottom floors ...
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James Morrow, author of Galápagos Regained
Fishbowl boasts an abundance of mordant whimsy fused to a bodhisattva's sensibility, as if the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr. had mysteriously found himself reincarnated as the fifteenth Dalai Lama and then continued to write epigrammatic novels.
