Life of Pi by Yann Martel
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Book Reviews of Life of Pi
Book Review: a boy, a tiger, a boat, and life
Summary: 5 Stars
Just thinking about Life of Pi makes me want to jump head first into this novel all over again. I could not put this book down from the first sentence to the very last. Life of Pi was an incredible book and I recommend it to any one who is looking for a good read filled with delightful insights, subtle humor, and brilliant imagination. Pi Patel lives with his family in Pondicherry, India, where his father is a zookeeper. After his father becomes frustrated with the Indian government, the family decides to move to Canada to start their life over. But after their ship sinks in a "monstrous metallic burp," Pi finds himself stuck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in a lifeboat with an orangutan, hyena, tiger, and a crippled zebra. His story is one of survival that can be applied to more than just the story.
One thing I loved most about this novel was the beautiful way in which it was written. Yann Martel weaves seemingly unrelated things together (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, tigers, dorados, orange whistles, algae, and the mysteries of life, to name a few) to make one incredible story. He truly has a gift for story telling and I am so glad I have read his story.
Yet this novel has more to it than just great writing. An aspect that I found interesting was that Pi practiced three religions: his native Hindu, Islam, and Christianity. Even while those around him, including the leaders of his religions, were pressing him to choose one religion over another, Pi did not because he loved God and loved all three of his religions. Life of Pi made a profound statement for a multi-religious world: all religions are full of love and not one is better than another is.
Life of Pi challenges its readers to think about the better stories in life. After I had finished the novel, I was not able to forget about it. I have turned it over and over in my head and I am still not through with it. This book is a think piece and more than just an excellent read.
I immersed myself in this wonderful novel. Every detail, every insight made me want to keep reading, keep sinking deeper and deeper into Yann Martel's world. Sleep and homework were just afterthoughts as I soared through this book. Every time I picked it up, my world fell away and I too was stuck in the middle of the sea with nothing but a lifeboat and a tiger. I cannot find the words to best describe this beautiful novel. Anything I say will not do it justice, for it is a novel of its own kind, a novel of religion, philosophy, zoology, and survival. How then can I write a review of it without taking away some of its mystic and awe? I have no idea, dear reader, all I can do is advise you to take an unlikely adventure with a boy and a tiger and the Pacific Ocean.
Book Review: You CAN judge this book by its cover
Summary: 5 Stars
Yann Martel's "Life of Pi" is one of the most accessible novels I have found in a long time. On the surface, Pi is a light read with short chapters that are easy to handle for those of us who like to read in small spurts and reflect on it for awhile. But don't let its light and playful nature fool you. When we zoom out, we realize that there are some very significant themes to deal with, and that there are a number of rather serious messages behind this off the wall story of a boy trapped on a boat with a Bengal tiger. Without knowing what to expect, I found the beginning of this book to contain some of the most profound statements I've uncovered on the subject of religion. Martel's character becomes so obsessed with the traits and customs of Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity that he finds it nearly impossible to choose one over the other two. As hilarity ensues, the reader comes to realize that the differences between these religions are really more subtle than we first thought. It is his curiosity that sets up Pi Patel as the peculiar character he becomes.
Besides its religious component, Martel's book serves as a commentary on zoos. The author fills his readers with a wealth of interesting animal and zoo facts while refraining from sounding like a textbook. The zoo becomes another classy source of humor in the narrative, but Martel is still able to draw us back to thinking about real-life issues. It is Pi's father's position as a zookeeper that causes Pi to be marooned on a small lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a small entourage of animals, including a large tiger that causes Pi a great deal of concern.
Pi is stranded on a lifeboat with a moderate quantity of provisions, but discovers that he is sharing his living space with a dangerous tiger. It is at this point where Martel steers the novel in the direction of survival. Not only must Pi survive at sea amidst lack of nourishment, loneliness and exposure, but he must survive in the company of a tiger that could finish him off with no trouble at all. Martel still manages to put a humorous spin on the concept of survival, without going over the top.
We have in Life of Pi a book dealing with survival, religions, and animals and zoos. More contrasting topics there never were, but Martel does a remarkable job in weaving all of these loose ends together to form a novel that reads more like a conversation. This plot, however incredible, is actually quite easy to follow, and is a great novel to discuss in group. Yann Martel makes it clearly understood to us that we read fiction to fuel our imaginations, and that a little bit of fiction in our factual world is most essential.
Book Review: Amazing work of Art
Summary: 5 Stars
Fantastic, profound, and at times more than painfully funny. I think that this is the least you can expect from a novel which chronicles a Hindu-Christian-Muslim son of a zookeeper in his pilgrimage across the Pacific Ocean with a single Bengal tiger as his only companion. Life of Pi defies definition, leaving you with no true expectations except to be surprised by nothing.The book is divided into three convenient, easily digestible portions, each of which focuses on a very distinct portion of Pi's journey. Book I opens with some pertinent biographical information. Piscine Molitor Patel was born to be the son of a kind zookeeper and named after the French word for swimming pool. His childhood was a wonderful blend of wild animals, schoolboy taunts, and various butcherings of his French name in British India. Early on he christens himself Pi, for simplicity and sanity, and the story can carry on once more. The highlight of this first section for me was the religious dialogues, as it is not common to find a boy practicing actively three generally mutual-exclusive religions. Author Yann Martel does an amazing job painting a striking commentary on the religious world and the way in which it works without overstepping any boundaries.
The second section of the book, and the longest portion, seems to be the most engrossing and rapidly moving of the three. Book II follows Pi as his family's transport to Canada dies in the middle of the ocean with a "monstrous metallic burp". Within minutes Pi's life is changed forever as he finds himself alone in a lifeboat with a small menagerie, the sole survivors of the sunken Indian zoo transport. One by one the animals devour each other until it is just Pi and the Tiger, floating, thinking, praying on the Big Blue. It's a psychological ordeal, this survival of the fittest on the open sea, a battle of the wills to not lay down and bake to death under the southern sun, and at times it becomes exhausting to read, but it is never difficult to turn the page one more time.
Book III picks up where Book II left off, but reviewing the end of a book can be downright confusing. To thoroughly examine and prescribe a level of rating without divulging the importancies of the plot is not necessarily possible. I can say however that Pi's story does draw to a fine close, and only in a remarkable manner such as Martel would allow it.
Sufficed to say, the author crafted a masterpiece with Life of Pi, never ceasing to inspire and provoke questions and self-examination, and always with the trademark wit and dry humor for which I'm sure he will long be remembered.
Book Review: Amazing Read
Summary: 5 Stars
I finished reading Life of Pi only yesterday. Clearly, I am reading it long after all the hype from the book has died and those about the movie are yet to catch up. I found the book amazing. There are plenty of good things to be said- the richness of details, the matured yet lucid writing style, the spectacular imagination that makes one feel as if it is not a book, but a pair of virtual reality eye-wear that she is holding, and I can go on forever. The reviewers before me all have pointed out these excellent atributes about the book, I refrain from reiterating them. What I wanted to write about, is slightly different and very much off a book review.
The story is supposed to be one that should make one believe in God. I was already a believer and continue to be so. However, I feel like I missed the whole point. The story did not reinforce my faith in God. Not because my mind discounted it as a story; I am completely ready to believe that something like this really happened to someone. But even then, I do not see how my faith in God is to be confirmed by this account.
I can anticipate that some of you would suggest that the very fact that the boy survived after spending 227 days on a life boat with a tiger in the Pacific Ocean is a miracle, and miracles are proof that God exists. But there is my problem. I do not see a miracle, precisely because I have read the story. Had this just been a newspaper headline, like about some people who survive after being buried in the earthquake rubble for a week, I would have felt that this was a miracle. But "Life of Pi" confirmed and reinforced my faith in human ability, capability and tenacity. This book makes you think that humans can survive anything- as long as they apply their thinking, their knowledge and their will. Reason triumphs here, not faith. The boy was a natural believer in God and found a lot of solace in praying. He naturally adopted the ways of all major religions. This is evidence that his faith and belief were Himalayan, in that, nothing could probably shake them. Even a tragedy on this scale. But the fact that he survived, was not because he prayed, but because he was smart, hard-working, alert and was a quick-learner with a presence of mind. If you suggest that God's hand is to be seen in all of this because God created us, I will not disagree, but I will say that I knew it and believed it even before reading the book.
In my opinion, Life of Pi, is all about being human even in the most animal-like circumstances, even with an animal, and that one should never lose faith in his or her abilities.
Book Review: A GAME OF MAKE-BELIEVE
Summary: 5 Stars
The shape of the narrative in this highly entertaining and readable novel is basically determined by a pair of Japanese insurance adjusters. These gentlemen do not believe the narrator's account of how he survived after his ship sank, so to get rid of them he tells another, totally different and much more prosaic, version. It seems to me that a very good joke is being played on anyone who worries about which is the `true' narrative. This is fiction for goodness sake - none of it ever happened. The main account is remarkable for being made to sound as convincing as the author manages to do. Purely as a story, it is perhaps a little more likely than The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and I was very conscious, in a thoroughly enjoyable way, of being manipulated and played with by the author. I know a certain amount about animal behaviour just through being interested in the subject. However my knowledge is strictly that of a dilettante and amateur, and the author's grasp of the matter is either greater than mine (which I can easily believe) or he is able to pass it off as greater than it is to someone possessed of my level of knowledge. In terms of credibility, the origin of the tiger's name is perfectly believable but if a reader can accept how the narrator came to be named as he was then that reader ought to be able to swallow more or less anything that follows. It is all just a tale - a very clever, original and absorbing tale - as far as I can discern, not an allegory like Gulliver's Travels nor carrying a moral like the Ancient Mariner.
The other main thread is the narrator's interest in religions - plural. He is something more than ecumenical in his tastes, and he values the world's various faiths for the level of edification they bring him. He seems not to be interested in what factual truth, if any, there may be in their legends and doctrines, but I was heartened, as well as being slightly taken aback, by his placid assertion of what has long seemed obvious to me, namely that atheism is a more honest and reputable viewpoint than agnosticism. When I was inclined at times to wonder what the connexion might be between the religious thread and the principal narrative, it seemed to me that it was perhaps to be sought in an imaginative disregard for anything so prosaic as fact.
All thoroughly enjoyable and recommendable so far as I'm concerned. If you have not so far read the book, my recommendation is not to take the slightest notice of anything you may have seen about the relative truth of the two alternative stories. The truth is neither here nor there.