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A Bowl Of Fruit, A Whale In The Woods by Russel Like
01/10/2004 . Source: Phil Jones 
pub: Brunswick Galaxy Press. 258 page enlarged paperback. Price: $13.95 (US). ISBN: 0-966-1039-1-2. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. Greg Fisher is just your normal everyday man. He gets up in the morning, goes to his regular job as an accountant and everything is, well, normal. He has a few friends from college whom he meets up with now and then, but in reality his life is fairly hum drum existence.
One day, he finds a strange pair of glasses in his apartment and attached to them by a piece of string is a small picture of a bridge not far from his apartment building. Curious though as to how they got there, he puts on the glasses and scans the room. Not much happens until he happens to glance at the painting on the wall. A small LED-like red dot appears in the corner of his vision. He moves his head away from the picture and then back again to confirm it's not a fluke. Again, the red light appears when he looks at the picture.
For a few days, he disregards the glasses but later on he starts to experiment with them. Fisher finds that not only does a red light appear when viewing a certain painting, he can concentrate on the painting that is identified by the red. He finds he can use the painting attached to the glasses to return to his own reality.
He visits art galleries to experiment where he can visit finding realities that are both similar to his own with similar people and others which differ wildly. There is though a strange man who is outside his apartment building every time he comes back home who keeps asking him if he has seen any strange objects in his apartment.
This keeps happening, until he is chased by the man shouting he want the glasses back. Fisher runs into a gallery and hastily jumps into a painting. It turns out to be a reality somewhat like Nazi Germany and he is arrested for having a painting and thrown in a cell.
This is advertised on the back cover as being a humorous book, but personally I can't see it myself. I think the author was trying to be satirical and trying to get a number of points across in the process, but I feel the work fails on both counts. There is certainly no obvious slapstick or comic elements to be found. The characters are, you could say, slightly eccentric or oddball, but even they provide little or no humour to the proceedings.
There are numerous mentions to 'Star Trek' and in a way that's what it feels like. A poorly written 'Star Trek' script or one of its variants. The plot elements feel very derivative of a whole host of sources. It almost has a feeling of over familiarity to it. The characters are poorly developed and altogether not really very interesting. As for the story-line, it doesn't take you long to see where it's going.
There are a few elements of this book I enjoyed, but these were let down by overly long sections of pure character development and back-story which felt over-worked and were too long. This book could have been so much better. Even the alternate realities were uninspired. It could have taken us anywhere but stuck with the monotonous. It also felt as though the author were trying to get distinct points over about individualism and the like and it just seemed a bit too contrived for my liking.
I think with a bit more idea development and better character building this could have been a really good Science Fiction book. The ending for me just seals its fate. It is wrapped up with such speed that if you blink, you'll miss it.
I don't want to dismiss this novel as it's only Russel Like's second book, but the work just feels dumbed down. His next book needs more teeth.
Phil Jones
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