Book review: Life of Pi- Yann Martel
Very satisfying read about a boy named Pi and a tiger named Richard Parker adrift on a raft in the Pacific Ocean. Actually that much you could probably deduce from looking at the cover but it bears repeating.
It’s a great piece of magic realism that forces you to wonder at what point the story diverts from reality. One reviewer said it was like Calvin and Hobbes with an overt religious theme and I think that captures the spirit of it nicely. Though even Calvin’s worst dinners don’t approach what Pi ends up eating. Whether it will make you believe in God, as the author promises, is debatable as He’s got a funny way of showing His love to his most dedicated fans…
To answer a few of the Oprah’s Book Club type questions at the end of it:
Which animal would you like to find yourself with on a lifeboat?
I reckon a chicken for a steady supply of eggs and eventually, if it started getting on my nerves, nuggets. It’s less likely to harbour homicidal thoughts than your average big cat too.
Pi defends zoos. Are you convinced? Is a zoo a good place for a wild animal?
I reckon so. Though the zoo’s he’s defending are pretty far removed from self-styled ‘modern’ zoos with their breeding programs, scientific studies and laboratories and suchlike. Animals are animals and I reckon he writes pretty well about their nature. As long as the creatures are well cared for and human knowledge advanced then why not? Bring it on. That said, despite myself, I can’t help but feel sorry for tropical animals stuck in British zoos. And poor old Copita de nieve in Barcelona zoo who positively radiated depression before kicking the bucket a few years back. Still why the hell not. Nope Zoos aren’t going into Room 101.
In the Author’s Note, Martel wonders whether fiction is ‘the selective transforming of reality, the twisting of it to bring out its essence’. If this is so, what is the essence of Pi and his story?
Over to you, Oprah…
Thank you! I took part in a book club discussion of Life of Pi and I was the only one who liked it. What did you make of the living island?
*CONTAINS SPOILERS* scroll down….
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I thought it was a fantastic idea, singularly impossible but made up of just the right mix of elements of horror and safety. Like a modern day land of the Lotus Eaters. Those chapters have a whole Homerian feel to them that’s definitely apt for the closing parts of an Odyssey. And meercats! the cutest beings on the planet, inspired stuff.
I don’t think he could possibly have found this living island. If anything it’s a delusion caused by finding a real island and either eating something with psychotropic qualities or just the insanity that 200 odd days at see will deal you. If I’d spent a few weeks at sea squeezing fish lungs into my mouth, trees with buds containing human teeth would be one of my more pleasant nightmares…
Glad you liked it too, Pat. What’s your take on it?