Life in a Fishbowl by Len Vlahos (review)

When Jackie’s father discovers he has a brain tumor that will kill him in three to four months, he decides to provide for his family by accepting the offer of a ruthless TV executive who offers five million dollars to the family if they will turn the remaining months of Jared’s life into a reality show. Without consulting his family, Jared signs the contract, and introverted Jackie’s worst nightmares are realized; not only will she be losing her beloved father, who has always been her best friend, but she is losing her privacy to deal with his death in her own way. She turns to her only other friend, a Russian internet acquaintance named Max, for help, but it is only when they join forces with Hazel, an online gamer who had tried to raise money to allow Jared to die in peace, that they are able to work out a plan to successfully thwart the control the reality show people have claimed over all of their lives. Add to the mix a psychopathic billionaire, a fanatical nun, and Glio, the personified tumor itself, and you get a multifaceted send-up of contemporary cultural life and values regarding the right to die and the spectacle of personal tragedy. What is curiously lost is Jackie’s relationship with her father; the intrusion of the media and Jared’s gradual loss of his faculties estranges father and daughter and produces an emotionally distancing effect exacerbated by the book’s continually shifting focus, which means that readers, like Jackie, have little time to grieve. Nonetheless, the narrative structure and tone compel interest, humor, judgment, and righteous anger, and readers will be left with much to discuss.