Yann Martel

An old man named Piscine Molitar Patel, known as Pi, tells an author about his life as a young boy, and his story of epic survival when the ship he was in with his family, emigrating from India was shipwrecked. Pi spent 227 on a lifeboat with little food, and sharing his space with a Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker. Yes, this is a strange book in many ways but oddly captivating.

I did find some of the technical aspects of how Pi constructed his raft a bit confusing, but it didn’t spoil my enjoyment – I could get the general idea. Parts of the novel are clearly allegorical and there is a religious undercurrent running throughout (prior to his family emigrating, Pi practices Hindi, Islam and Christianity at the same time) which didn’t always work for me.

I won’t give any spoilers to do with the ending, suffice to say it has divided readers and I can understand why. Personally I did like it and it did make me think – and it made things that had gone before make sense.

There’s quite a long build up to the main part of the story, this being Pi’s survival, and I really enjoyed reading about his life prior to this major event with it’s quirky characters and offbeat humour. I think this is a book that you need to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy and fortunately I was.… (more)

Give me a break. Martel can, sometimes, choose good words and string them together pleasingly. And some ideas here are worth making a movie out of. But literature? No. Reminded me of nothing more than the Celestine Prophecy or Bridge of Birds, maybe. Or possibly Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

I will say that I like the first part, about Pi's childhood in the zoo, with the two Mr. Kumars and the the three holy men.

But that claim about Pi's story making me believe in God, what was that? I don't even see such an attempt, much less anything approaching success. The whole thing is way overlong and quite unTrue.

ETA: good discussion, w/ more of my thoughts (and with *spoilers*) here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/18594445-life-of-pi---spoilers… (more)