Scan barcode
A review by hank
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
4.0
3.5 stars rounded to 4. I keep telling myself to be a bit more stingy with the stars but I seem to be getting better at choosing books or at least more able to see the value in all of them.
I usually avoid these types of books. I really don't care to read much about normal lives. I prefer some supernatural thrown in somewhere to emphasize the point the author wants to make, or reading about some extraordinary historical figure. The setup here has been done many times before, an apartment building where the author can examine a swath of lives and how they each, briefly, interact with each other. The element that got me to pick the book up was that I was anticipating some twist due to the fish plummeting down past the windows. Perhaps the fish gives a new and interesting perspective or the examination of each set of lives gets shorter and shorter as the fish picks up speed? Nope, none of that. The goldfish doesn't seem to have much of a perspective and is a bit superfluous, except for the fact that you wonder throughout the entire book, how he gets airborne.
Somer was able to inject much more drama into these lives and situations than I thought was possible. He has a knack for letting you see problems many pages in advance and then letting you stew while he seemingly goes about telling other stories.
Probably a 4 star solid rating if I weren't predisposed to not liking it. I was picking too many nits at the beginning but by the end I had laughed out loud several times, gotten quite nervous and angry at multiple points. What else do you really want from a book besides that?
I usually avoid these types of books. I really don't care to read much about normal lives. I prefer some supernatural thrown in somewhere to emphasize the point the author wants to make, or reading about some extraordinary historical figure. The setup here has been done many times before, an apartment building where the author can examine a swath of lives and how they each, briefly, interact with each other. The element that got me to pick the book up was that I was anticipating some twist due to the fish plummeting down past the windows. Perhaps the fish gives a new and interesting perspective or the examination of each set of lives gets shorter and shorter as the fish picks up speed? Nope, none of that. The goldfish doesn't seem to have much of a perspective and is a bit superfluous, except for the fact that you wonder throughout the entire book, how he gets airborne.
Somer was able to inject much more drama into these lives and situations than I thought was possible. He has a knack for letting you see problems many pages in advance and then letting you stew while he seemingly goes about telling other stories.
Probably a 4 star solid rating if I weren't predisposed to not liking it. I was picking too many nits at the beginning but by the end I had laughed out loud several times, gotten quite nervous and angry at multiple points. What else do you really want from a book besides that?