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This is a very readable, humorous, engaging novel – just don't judge it by its first and last chapters, In Which, to borrow the format of the chapter headings, Our Author Is A Little Too Pleased With His Own Narrative Techniques.
I was attracted by the lure of a character called Ian the Goldfish, whose journey in search of freedom forms part of the book. This is so, and Ian is indeed a welcome if intermittent visitor to these pages, but he's an observer rather than a character, and fairly peripheral to the action. He's really there as a metaphor: his "fishbowl" (or goldfish bowl as the UK would know it) is an image for the apartment block which really is at the centre of things. Nearly all the characters either live in or visit the block, and it is the connecting link between their stories. This is actually quite an old-fashioned technique: the use of a building or something similar as a hook to hang stories on was popular in films and novels of the 40s and 50s, (and in fact the narrative voice of Fishbowl occasionally reminds me of a 1951 novel by the once hugely popular, now largely forgotten, Norman Collins, Children of the Archbishop, in which a London bus is used in the same way). The first chapter of Fishbowl announces this intent, unfortunately at some length; it takes four pages to say, basically, "this story is set in an apartment block".
When, however, he's done expatiating on his theme of "a box that contains life and everything else", things pick up almost as fast as Ian descends 27 floors. Somers' people are well drawn and easy to become involved with, and his use of the out-of-order elevator as a plot device is masterly, especially when combined with how he switches between stories so that we are sometimes ahead of the characters – we are awaiting breathlessly the meeting of two unsuspecting women on a staircase for a considerable time before it happens. The short chapters are not only very easily readable, they also suit the episodic nature of the action and maintain the pace. There's no doubt that we end up wanting to know what becomes of the under-appreciated janitor Jimenez, the obsessive-compulsive Claire, the vulnerable but resourceful Herman and many others, not forgetting Ian.
It soon becomes clear that many of the inhabitants of this block are, for one reason or another, lonely: the social isolation that can be generated in a community that consists of boxes within a box is well conveyed. Ian never finds any real meeting-point with his snail companion Troy; they are too different, but some of the people in the bigger fishbowl are luckier. In fact, for my taste there are a few too many happy endings neatly tied up with bows – people are miraculously presented with cures for mental conditions, new jobs and families to replace those they have lost and some of these don't convince me (Herman's for one, because the authorities would not, I think allow it). And in the last chapter the author again becomes a rather irritating presence, summing things up, telling us what may have happened after the book ends (surely the reader's privilege to speculate on?) and veering into cosy cliché with statements like "everything happens for a reason". For all the contemporary setting, he strikes me as quite a conventionally omniscient authorial voice, what Thackeray called a puppet-master. I doubt that, at the moment, he would let any of his characters surprise him, and he'll probably be a better writer when he does.
Nevertheless, I like this book. The man can tell a story and he has, for the most part, an engaging style. Because there are so many stories and outcomes, I'm finding it hard to quote without spoilers, so here is Ian on his descent, glancing in at the passing windows of the tower block and reflecting on his own fishbowl. This is not a spoiler, because if you think there can be but one end to a goldfish who falls 27 floors, you are wrong.
I was attracted by the lure of a character called Ian the Goldfish, whose journey in search of freedom forms part of the book. This is so, and Ian is indeed a welcome if intermittent visitor to these pages, but he's an observer rather than a character, and fairly peripheral to the action. He's really there as a metaphor: his "fishbowl" (or goldfish bowl as the UK would know it) is an image for the apartment block which really is at the centre of things. Nearly all the characters either live in or visit the block, and it is the connecting link between their stories. This is actually quite an old-fashioned technique: the use of a building or something similar as a hook to hang stories on was popular in films and novels of the 40s and 50s, (and in fact the narrative voice of Fishbowl occasionally reminds me of a 1951 novel by the once hugely popular, now largely forgotten, Norman Collins, Children of the Archbishop, in which a London bus is used in the same way). The first chapter of Fishbowl announces this intent, unfortunately at some length; it takes four pages to say, basically, "this story is set in an apartment block".
When, however, he's done expatiating on his theme of "a box that contains life and everything else", things pick up almost as fast as Ian descends 27 floors. Somers' people are well drawn and easy to become involved with, and his use of the out-of-order elevator as a plot device is masterly, especially when combined with how he switches between stories so that we are sometimes ahead of the characters – we are awaiting breathlessly the meeting of two unsuspecting women on a staircase for a considerable time before it happens. The short chapters are not only very easily readable, they also suit the episodic nature of the action and maintain the pace. There's no doubt that we end up wanting to know what becomes of the under-appreciated janitor Jimenez, the obsessive-compulsive Claire, the vulnerable but resourceful Herman and many others, not forgetting Ian.
It soon becomes clear that many of the inhabitants of this block are, for one reason or another, lonely: the social isolation that can be generated in a community that consists of boxes within a box is well conveyed. Ian never finds any real meeting-point with his snail companion Troy; they are too different, but some of the people in the bigger fishbowl are luckier. In fact, for my taste there are a few too many happy endings neatly tied up with bows – people are miraculously presented with cures for mental conditions, new jobs and families to replace those they have lost and some of these don't convince me (Herman's for one, because the authorities would not, I think allow it). And in the last chapter the author again becomes a rather irritating presence, summing things up, telling us what may have happened after the book ends (surely the reader's privilege to speculate on?) and veering into cosy cliché with statements like "everything happens for a reason". For all the contemporary setting, he strikes me as quite a conventionally omniscient authorial voice, what Thackeray called a puppet-master. I doubt that, at the moment, he would let any of his characters surprise him, and he'll probably be a better writer when he does.
Nevertheless, I like this book. The man can tell a story and he has, for the most part, an engaging style. Because there are so many stories and outcomes, I'm finding it hard to quote without spoilers, so here is Ian on his descent, glancing in at the passing windows of the tower block and reflecting on his own fishbowl. This is not a spoiler, because if you think there can be but one end to a goldfish who falls 27 floors, you are wrong.
Ian thinks of his fishbowl, now empty save for the algae, the pink plastic castle and Troy, slipping across the glass with his interminable munching. Ian thinks of what a lonely thing Troy's shell would be without the chewy organic mass of Troy to inhabit it. Ian won't miss the sound of Troy eating. He won't miss the constant slurping and sucking noises, the ripping noise Troy makes day and night as he sucks the algae from the walls. He won't miss that chiefly because his fishbowl is no longer even a memory for him.
Ian is distracted from his thoughts by something he spies through the dust-streaked glass of the balcony sliding door to the apartment he passes on the fifteenth floor. In the fraction of a second it takes, his mind captures a still life of the goings-on inside.
