Fishbowl by Bradley Somer

Published by St. Martin's Press on August 4, 2015

Fishbowl is "a glimpse into the box" that is called the Seville on Roxy. The box contains "the perpetual presence of life itself."

We are told in chapter 2 that Ian the goldfish will plunge from a 27th floor balcony in chapter 54. We are also told that Troy the snail, who stays safely in the bowl, lives the kind of uneventful life that usually assures dull longevity, while Ian is an adventurer who has always yearned to go beyond the limits of his fishbowl. Is it better to die as "an old fish without one adventure had"? Of course not. Ian is no snail.

The story's main characters are people, which is fortunate since Ian, while a pleasant goldfish, doesn't have much personality. Katie is Connor Radley's girlfriend. Katie falls in love quickly and often, usually with the wrong men. Connor clearly falls into the "bad boyfriend" category, as most of his multiple sex partners understand, but maybe he has unmined depths. Or maybe not.

Conner lives in the Seville, as do the other main characters: Jiminez the super, Petunia Delilah the pregnant woman who is about to give birth, Garth the construction worker who can't wait to transform himself with the contents of a mysterious package, Claire the "aggressively introverted" (not to say agoraphobic) shut-in who gets paid for phone sex, and Homeschooled Herman who suffers from blackouts that he regards as proof of teleportation and time travel.

The main characters are tied together not just by their residence in Seville but by the failure of both elevators to function properly for the half hour during which the story takes place. In a series of short chapters, the narrative jumps from character to character (including, occasionally, Ian). As Ian falls, we are treated to brief descriptions of the lives of apartment dwellers (main characters and others) as he plunges past their windows.

The Seville is a building full of lonely people who, in different ways, don't quite know how to connect with the world. Some of them become a little less lonely by the novel's end. Others become a little lonelier but they learn about themselves in the process. Some learn that overcoming loneliness requires "an uncomfortable exposure to let oneself be true in the presence of another."

The characters are all struggling to give definition to their lives. They want to be happy. They aren't certain how to accomplish that end but they know that things need to change. To a large extent, Fishbowl is about finding the courage to change a life, to find yourself while finding the freedom to be yourself.

The story is very funny but it is also sweet and occasionally touching in ways that are both genuine and original. It is also a smart and insightful look at how people can have multiple identities at the same time, each of them real, all of them assembling into a complicated and contradictory whole. Fishbowl is a wonderful novel of birth and death and everything in between, all revealed in a thirty minute glimpse into a box that "fills up with infinitely thin layers of experience," layers so thin that there will always be room for the box to hold an infinity of new and eventful experiences as its residents live their separate lives together.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (graphic adaptation) by Denise Mina

Published by Vertigo on July 28, 2015

This is a faithful adaptation of a compelling story -- the story of Lizbeth Salander's conflicts with her father, with the government, and with her past. The graphic novel retains the flavor as well as the plot of Stieg Larsson's novel. A graphic adaptation is necessarily condensed, but the best ones use images to convey much of the story contained in the original narrative (a picture replaces a thousand words). The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest does that intelligently, striking a sensible balance between words and graphics. Traditional dialog balloons tell us what characters are saying but Denise Mina avoids the expository blocks of text that crowd out the art in so many graphic novels.

In fact, the absence of text boxes and the inclusion of panels that have no words at all give the story a cinematic feel. A page might introduce a new scene in a close-up panel, following it with a wide angle panel, giving the impression of having panned back. There's a real sense of flow and movement that contributes to the sense of watching a movie.

This might be a good alternative for readers who want to know why the world went so crazy for the Millennium novels but don't want to take the time to read one. Of course, a graphic adaptation never has all the subtlety or nuance of a full novel, but Stieg Larsson was not big on subtlety, so readers won't necessarily miss much by reading the graphic version. All the essentials are preserved here, including dramatic tension and character development. While Denise Mina's adaptation isn't meant as a Cliff's Notes version of the original, the graphic form might help even help readers who decide to read Larsson's novel by adding clarity to a complex plot.

The art is shadowy and moody. It is a bit inconsistent -- two artists worked on this, which might account for the different renderings of faces in different parts of the book -- but on the whole the art suits the story.

RECOMMENDED

Duke City Desperado by Max Austin

Published by Alibi on June 9, 2015

The Duke City novels combine believable but offbeat characters with fast-moving crime plots. Max Austin (the pen name Steve Brewer uses for these novels) always manages to give crime an amusing spin. Duke City Desperado is a little funnier and a little less poignant than the first two, but however Austin chooses to strike that balance, this series of Albuquerque crime stories is maintaining its high quality. I particularly like the fact that each novel focuses on a different character. That choice should keep the series fresh.

Dylan James is a trouble magnet. When he rabbits from a stolen van that his sky-high friend Doc Burnett uses in an attempt to rob a bank from a drive-through window, he begins life as an Albuquerque fugitive, a wanted desperado. His first stop is the house of his ex-girlfriend, who is now dating a tough guy named Antony. Then he meets Katrina ("like the hurricane"), a college student who is fascinated by crime.

Eventually Dylan is being chased by the police and the FBI, by Antony, and even by Katrina, while Antony is being chased by the sister of Dylan's ex-girlfriend, who does not appreciate the way Antony treats women. The sister is joined by a formidable group of women who wield footwear as weapons. A focal point for much of the action is the apartment of Dylan's stoner friend, whose attempts to play video games while maintaining a steady high are constantly interrupted by people who are looking for Dylan. The lighthearted hijinks that ensue (including Doc's antics as a federal prisoner) are consistently funny. Throughout the novel and particularly as it neared the end, I experienced a number of laugh-out-loud moments.

What I really like about these novels is their recognition that a good bit of crime is stupidly impulsive, that everyone deserves a fresh start (or nearly everyone), and that separating the good guys from the bad guys is often a matter of opinion. Austin's rogues are always affable, regular people whose lives have been dictated by unfortunate circumstance and bad choices but who never let go of their humanity. The plots are just as likable as the characters. Like the other novels in the series, Duke City Desperado is a light diversion from the usual darkness of crime stories.

RECOMMENDED

The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips

Published by Henry Holt and Co. on August 11, 2015

The Beautiful Bureaucrat is a strange and puzzling book. I like books that are strange and puzzling unless they seem pointless. Winning prose, an enticing story, good humor, and a sympathetic protagonist sustained my interest in The Beautiful Bureaucrat even when I worried that the story -- a surrealistic fantasy -- might ultimately go nowhere.

After 19 months of unemployment, Josephine, wife of Joseph, takes a job inputting data from dusty gray files into a database. She does not understand the purpose of the data and her boss does not think she needs to know. Josephine's job is mysterious and meaningless in a Kafkaesque way. She sits behind a closed door in a windowless office in a building full of similar offices, all apparently occupied by employees who resemble Josephine in their averageness. Hallways are empty; workers eat at their desks; vending machines in break rooms are rumored but difficult to find. When Josephine tells Joseph that she is becoming a bureaucrat, he advises her to eat more vegetables.

Josephine is guardedly relieved to be befriended by Trishiffany, another bureaucrat, but relief is replaced by anxiety as Josephine begins to understand the meaning of the data she is inputting. The purpose of the database, however, is unclear for much of the novel, as are many other things in Josephine's life -- like how do "attempted delivery" notices end up on her apartment door every time (roughly once a week) she and her husband move to a new sublet? And why does everyone in Josephine's workplace look more-or-less like Josephine? Readers who expect a novel to answer all the questions it raises might be disappointed with The Beautiful Bureaucrat. Not everything becomes clear at the end.

Much of the story unfolds in Josephine's thoughts as she tries to make sense of her job, of her work environment, of her husband, of the assessment she receives from the waitress who reads her palm, of the childhood experiences that failed to prepare her to meet the mysteries of adult life. Near the end, I thought Helen Phillips might have written herself into an inescapable corner, but the story resolves rather neatly. Its meaning is open to interpretation, which might bother readers who crave the certainty of concrete stories that spell everything out, but the novel is not so wildly uncertain as to be empty of meaning.

It turns out that the story does have a point: bureaucracy is a matter of life and death. Or: life's problems can be solved with a little Wite-Out. They are funny, absurdist points but they might also be serious if taken as metaphors. Whether you want to do that is up to you. I wouldn't call this a novel of great depth, but it is a work of great charm.

RECOMMENDED

Disintegration by Richard Thomas

Published by Alibi on May 26, 2015

Disintegration might be the right word to describe the state of the main character's mind. It might describe the state of the reader's mind while trying to piece together the story. The chapters tend to be brief and at the end of most of early chapters, I was asking "What's going on here?" Since I am drawn to stories of that nature -- puzzling dark psychological thrillers -- I enjoyed reading Disintegration, but readers with different tastes should be warned that there is nothing cozy (or conventional) about this mystery.

The narrator is an alcoholic, a derelict, the victim of a haunted past. He has a complicated relationship with a woman named Holly who also has complicated relationships with other men. We never learn the narrator's name and it is not clear that he even knows it.

The narrator is also an unremorseful killer who gets a new tattoo to memorialize each new victim. He keeps a machete in his armoire because, well, just in case someone knocks on his door. But he likes puppies -- beats their abusers to death, in fact -- so he can't be all bad. He also adopts a stray cat he names Luscious. Cat lovers might end up worrying about Luscious more than the narrator, who lacks a cat's innocent charm.

The narrator meets a man he calls Vlad who gives him assignments and three unidentified drugs called Happy, Sad, and Recovery. The assignments involve killing people. Most of them are people who have inflicted their share of harm, which might make it easier for the narrator to live with himself.

Every now and then a very brief chapter appears that contains dialog from answering machine recordings that the narrator plays over and over. The reader eventually understands why the recordings are so important to the narrator.

Who is Vlad, what is his motivation, how does he choose his victims, and why is the narrator serving his needs? Those questions are all part of the mystery. Of course, a novel that is uncertain from beginning to end can be frustrating, but Disintegration gradually makes more sense as the story progresses. In fact, it begins to twist and turn in new and interesting ways.

The reader's questions are not necessarily answered in convincing detail, but we at least get a rough outline by the end. The story lacks credibility -- a lot of "how could that be possible?" questions go unanswered -- and the ending is predictable (given the story's mood), but Disintegration always kept me engaged.

Parts of Disintegration capture the tragedy of life in vivid detail. Not just the narrator's life, but the lives of drug dealers and crack addicts and rape victims. There is a good bit of darkness here and that might put off readers who only want to read sunshiny stories. On the other hand, readers who enjoy psychological thrillers about sociopaths are likely to regard Disintegration as a worthwhile read.

RECOMMENDED