Life of Pi by Yann Martel
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Book Reviews of Life of Pi
Book Review: A satirist equal to Jonathan Swift
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't often review books that have 1800 reviews already, but I couldn''t resist.
Yann Martel is not only a consumate story teller but he does what a great novelist and satirist should: he make us think about our own folly and the folly of the world.
We get suckered right in from the absurd beginning with Pi an India boy named after a French swimming pool who grows up in a zoo with a tiger named Richard Parker.We fill out how all this came to be in good time.
Pi is a spiritually curious young boy and a practicing Hindu, Muslim, Christian all of which he practiced diligently until the religious authorities became infuriated and demanded his unwavering devotion to their one true path. This might be solely a jab at the state and absurdity of modern religion, except right now in India there is a village where the people joinly practice Islam and Hinduism and likewise the great Poobahs have decided that they could pracice religion that way.
We move on and Pi and his family are on their way to Canada zoo and all when the ship sinks and Pi, an hyena and Richard Parker the tiger are stranded alone on a life boat where Pi all but abandons religions in the name of day to day survival. What follows is a thrillingly probable, improbable set of adventures.
In case we miss some of the finer points, there are study question
Buy this box if you like entertainment or or if you want to delve deeper into the danger abyss of challenging our own believe systems
Book Review: Magnificent story
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is simply incredible. It felt like I was reading "The Old Man and the Sea" all over again. Martel weaves a beautiful tale that asks the reader to suspend disbelief for a while and delivers a classic in taking that risk. This book stays with the reader long after it is placed down.Book Review: Long . . . . . .
Summary: 2 Stars
The premise is interesting -- a man and a tiger aboard a small lifeboat. The novel, however, gets very tedious. And the end with the insurance adjusters (who come across as Laurel & Hardy) was unbelievable. The book was entertaining at times, but not worth finishing. Book Review: Couldn't Put It Down
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book 3 years ago and was looking up the author on Amazon to recommend it to a friend and I couldn't believe it only has an average of 4 stars. Of course i remember the story but I can't remember every nuance that moved me and put such light in my heart. So without giving away details I will just say that there is a lot of symbolism and underlying meanings going on so even though it was fiction I felt like a better person for reading such a beautiful story. I gave it to a friend when his grandfather died and he said that was the perfect novel to have with him during that time. Hope you enjoy as much as we did.Book Review: very entertaining, but a bit of a weak ending
Summary: 3 Stars
i thoroghly enjoyed reading this book. the imagination and execution of the the author's writing style is of high quality. the cadence and movement of the plot was impeccable.
my criticism, however, is in the implicit theme in the conclusion of the book that implies that epic stories and myths that come from the long lost past (and are often found in religion), if they can't be proven, must therefore not have happened. the lost city of troy was for so long considered to be a complete myth. well, we now know it existed. and almost exactly as it was described in the illiad! moreover, if we didn't have the actual specimens here to show/befuddle us, we wouldn't believe that the ancient pyramids could possibly have been constructed with an engineering ability far greater than our technologically enabled one.
i agree that great meaning, both individually and collectively as a society, can come from ancient myths that have been passed down from the centuries. however, i think it is a true mistake, and a symptom of ignorance and arrogance, to discredit the possibility of events occurring in human kind's distant past that seem very implausable and remote to us in this day and age. many of the events that took place in the seminal times of the great religions quite possibly did indeed occur and weren't simply the results of a creative scribes imagination. quite honestly, much stranger things than a tiger and boy sharing a raft at sea for a year have probably happened during the course of history.