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Revision as of 09:57, 12 November 2021
, 09:57, 12 November 2021no edit summary
{{infobox2
|title=Life in a Fishbowl
|author=Len Vlahos
|reviewer=Jill Murphy
Jared Stone has been diagnosed with a brain tumour. It's inoperable and he has only a few months left to live. Desperate to ensure financial security for his family after he's gone, Jared decides to auction himself - the rest of his life, his death, everything - on eBay for a reserve price of one million dollars. Unsurprisingly, eBay cancels the auction as against their terms and conditions but that's okay because Jared has come to the attention of a reality TV producer...
... Jared has also come to the attention of other people. There's his family - wife Deidre and daughters Megan and Jackie. There's a psychopathic billionaire who would just ''love'' to have a human life in only his hands. There's a lonely gaming enthusiast and a hardhearted nun. And there's a boy in Russia who is quite good at [[The Ultimate Video Editing Techniques For Any Content Creator|video-editing]]. All of these people will have a part to play in the last weeks of the life of a genuinely good man.
Goodness me, but ''Life in a Fishbowl'' has a veritable cornucopia of themes. It covers terminal illness, the grief associated with it, assisted dying, sibling rivalry, online gaming communities, reality TV, greed in a consumerist world and, well, that's enough to be going on with but it isn't all of it. Getting all this into a YA story you've decided to tell through multiple viewpoints is some ambition. And it's to the credit of Len Vlahos that he has achieved it. He even manages to credibly anthropomorphise a high-grade glioblastoma multiforme! This novel could have been a mess but it really wasn't. It read well and the overall narrative was clear. While authorial tone came over a little too loud and clear at times, there are many moments of genuine profundity. I felt for the Stones, even for Megan, the selfish, attention-seeking sibling. And the way in which the terminally-ill Jared Stone gradually slipped away from the reader as well as his family was beautifully done.
