A review by tasharobinson
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer

3.0

Struggled a bit to get through this book, which mixes Douglas Adams whimsy with attempts at grand philosophical profundity, and works better in the former mode than the latter. There's a lot of repetition in the way the author goes deep into what each of his characters are thinking at any moment — the book only covers about 30 minutes of action, with a frame story involving a goldfish falling off a building that takes only seconds, but stretches throughout the entire book. Given those choices, everything naturally feels compressed and like it isn't moving forward very rapidly. There's some really fun, lighthearted stuff here, and a lot of creative and interesting characterization, but whenever the book tried to stretch that into grand statements on the meaning of life, I felt it dragged.

Reviewed this for NPR here.