Amazing

Quirky, ambitious, with a touch of serendipity

Refreshingly original...quirky and colourful - if you want something different and unexpected to read this summer, this is definitely a break from the norm. ****

You’ll fall in love with this great book and its quirky characters

To decide to weave an intricate ensemble tale around the everyday lives, hopes and desires of those who occupy a high-rise apartment block is ambitious. To then decide that the hero of the story will be a philosophical goldfish – and that the novel’s ending will be given away inside the opening chapter – is just plain ballsy. But Canadian writer Bradley Somer pulls off the feat with ease.

Brilliant and quirky

Quirky fun...I couldn’t help falling (sorry!) for such a clever, irrepressible read

An irrepressible novel—breezy, funny, sexy, and bursting with life. Bradley Somer has enormous affection and empathy for his cast of all-too-human characters (including the goldfish named Ian).

Fishbowl boasts an abundance of mordant whimsy

Touching and well-written.

Enjoyable touches of farce and wry asides abound, underscoring moments of reckoning in eccentric, yet deeply human, dilemmas

Although Ian has only a goldfish’s seconds-long capacity for memory, readers will find themselves returning to the essential truths of Somer’s characters again and again

Take the tumble with Ian. Perhaps like me you will fall, end over end, through these pages: expectant, engaged, enthused, curious, entranced, alarmed. Bradley Somer's captivating first novel is a delight

Somer writes with game-changing empathy and curiosity. [He] tackles loneliness, life, love and death with wit and sensitivity, and the novel’s message – that “no single person lives their own life; we all live each other’s together” – is one that warrants repeating, even at a goldfish’s rate of recollection.

The quaint lesson of Mr. Somer’s bagatelle is that people should take flight from the narrow confines of their fears and find adventure in the wider world of others. That, and get their bored fish a companion or two.

a very unconventional exploration of human foibles... Fishbowl is a marvellous portrayal of the tentative - and often funny - ways human beings muddle about trying to connect with one another.

I loved the whimsy in "Fishbowl." The characters are imaginative and bright, yet still clearly fiction.

What other book can boast a goldfish as both the protagonist and eyewitness to the characters, dramas and events that unfold? Bradley Somer’s engaging UK debut novel, Fishbowl, does just that, taking the reader on a unique journey of escapism.

Funny, direct and very topical. Syal's compelling novel touches on red-hot feminine issues that cry out to be discussed, preferably in a book group, with plenty of wine.

Really good books have a way of transporting the reader to places they'd never normally go to, opening their eyes to experiences and isssues they wouldn't otherwise consider. Meera Syal does all this and more. A beautifully written novel about female friendship, surrogacy and the problems of late parenthood.

Rich, sensual, earthy and utterly unforced. I was transported.

Alive with malice and grace, this is a taut tale reminiscent of the nightmares of Patricia Highsmith

Prey and predators circle in lush southeast Asian settings that gleam with Osborne’s dazzling skill as a travel-writer

It shines with intrigue, with investigations into the nature of the non-rational, and evil, wrapped up in taught plotting

One of Britain’s most accomplished novelists.

An ingenious and atmospheric novel.

Lawrence Osborne is an experienced, competent author with an impressive knowledge of Asia… Comparisons with Graham Greene seem to be generously offered by other reviewers and I’ve already alluded to Conrad and a Patricia Highsmith yet my impression is that Mr. Osborne has a style all of his own.

McCarthy has put his finger on something, and he’s nailed it very precisely. It’s how we live now. All the information we process every day. What it’s doing to us.