An intriguing and challenging look at life in a fishbowl
Pet fish’s fall used as a framing device to peer into interconnected lives of building’s inhabitants
The world of fiction is filled with animal characters — dogs, cats, horses, even pigs. Fish, not so much. Bradley Somer’s eccentric new novel, Fishbowl, dives exuberantly into the void, giving the role of chorus to a goldfish named Ian. Admittedly, Somer notes Ian “has a brain that can’t fathom what it is looking at,” making the premise all the more intriguing, if challenging.
Ian lives a safe, albeit boring, existence in the bowl his owner Connor has placed on his balcony — disturbed in the midst of sex one too many times by a fish-eyed stare, Connor has banished Ian from his apartment.
One fateful day, while Connor argues with his girlfriend Katie, Ian’s bowl is uncovered, and the little guy decides to make a break for freedom. Goldfish, it turns out, “are repressed free spirits in search of the edge of the world, in pursuit of the unknown, and are predisposed to falling from great heights at much personal peril in order to find new territories.”
Alas, Ian’s trip ends up taking an unexpected path — he plunges right off the 27th floor.
Somer’s 2013 novel, Imperfections, won the CBC Bookie Award for new author and explored America’s fixation with beauty. In this new book, gaze is still the focus. Ian’s abode is a metaphor, and although he’s the one in the literal fishbowl, it’s the people around him who are the true subjects of scrutiny. As Ian falls, he becomes witness to intimate moments in the lives of the building’s inhabitants and visitors.
Using a fish as a framing device for what are, in essence, interconnected stories is unconventional. More common is Somer’s theme of isolation and the longing of his characters — awkwardly expressed or more often repressed — for human contact. Building superintendent Jimenez works longer than needed every day because he has nowhere else to go, forlornly aware, “There’s such a fragile, thin veneer of illusion between the words ‘together’ and ‘alone.’ ”
Fishbowl
Home-schooled Herman observes other kids aren’t making fun of him but rather the things he says and does, but also that “the hairbreadth distinction between the two is a coping mechanism.”
Some readers might find Somer’s characters fall into stock categories — the closet cross-dresser, wronged woman, troubled yet genius child and so on — yet such heartbreaking realizations and their all-too-human foibles are exactly the sort of thing that make them effective and engaging.
The apartment building is a microcosm of the greater world. In the brief moments in which Ian tumbles from floor to floor, seemingly random events occur, setting in motion a domino effect in which private lives converge with public ones and this odd assortment of characters ricochet off each other — with often surprising consequences.
Some stories intersect, others have nothing more than Ian’s observations and the building’s structure to cement them together, but in them, Somer sketches life’s existence, from birth to death, with its inherent joys and sorrows.
Ian reflects (as only a fish can be supposed to reflect — briefly, incompletely) on what’s happening, continually forgetting then remembering moments in his past along with the fact of his descent.
In a nimble allusion to life itself, he declares, “This gravity is no different from the constant pull time wields against all things.”
Fishbowl is a marvellous portrayal of the tentative — and often funny — ways human beings muddle about trying to connect with one another.
“He’s a good man, and I’m going to tell him so,” says construction worker Garth, “but not without the proper footwear.” Katie tosses herself into a series of relationships, despite repeatedly having her heart broken. She suffers from the “affliction of falling in love,” but has boldly decided that’s her “superpower.”
The cynical might consider her foolhardy, but the stance she and Ian each assume is a hopeful and brave one in a world in which at any moment you might, metaphorically speaking, topple off a balcony. Laurie Grassi is the former books editor at Chatelaine and can be found at lauriegrassi.com and @LaurieGrassi.