While falling from the twenty-seventh floor balcony, Ian the goldfish witnesses a culminating moment in each character’s story.
A truly unique novel

 FISHBOWL
by Bradley Somer
St. Martin’s Press,  June 2015

Told through the lens of a goldfish named Ian, falling from the twenty-seventh floor balcony of an apartment building, this novel follows an eclectic cast of characters on a single day. There is the handsome grad student, his girlfriend, and his mistress; the construction worker who feels trapped by a secret; the building’s superintendent who feels invisible and alone; the shut in; the pregnant woman on bed rest; and the home-schooled boy, Herman, who thinks he can travel through time. Though they share time and space, the characters have something even more important in common: they all face an obstacle and each one must make a decision that will affect how his or her life will proceed. In this one apartment building are stories of love, new life and death, of facing the ugly truth of who one has been and the beautiful truth of who one can become, and of learning that sometimes taking a risk is the only way to move forward.

As Ian the goldfish knows, “an entire life devoted to a fishbowl will make one die an old fish with not one adventure had.”

Bradley Somer was born in Sydney, Australia and grew up in Canada. His short fiction has appeared in literary journals, reviews and anthologies. His debut novel, Imperfections, was published in Fall 2012 by Nightwood Editions in Canada. Imperfections earned a starred review from Quill & Quire magazine, won the 2013 CBC Bookie Award for debut of the year, was one of the Canadian Bookseller’s Top 8 Picks for 2012, and has received a host of other critic’s praises ). FISHBOWL will be his US debut.