Martel, Yann - Life of Pi
Tue, Jan. 4th, 2005 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterPi Patel is stranded at sea one day when the ship carrying his family and an assortment of zoo animals sinks. He's left on a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra and a very large tiger, and soon, it's just down to him and the tiger (Richard Parker). Various extremely strange experiences ensue as Pi attempts to stay alive, and there are many interesting digressions into the nature of story, zookeeping, animal behavior, and religion.
I'm not quite sure why this is a story that is supposed to make me believe in God, but then, I'm rather cynical about that to begin with. It's a very interesting book, definitely, and Pi has a sort of wide-eyed yet pragmatic narrative voice that makes for quite compulsive reading. I personally really liked the digressions, which branch into some very assorted topics (the swimming pools of Paris being one), but I suppose it could feel a little too exposition-y for others. I especially liked reading about Pi's attempts to train Richard Parker in an effort to stay alive. While it's a fun book, I'm still a bit confused as to why it won the Booker. I suppose it's because of the ending. But to be honest, I didn't think the ending was quite as mind-blowing as the author intended it to be.
Spoilers for the ending here:
I talked to a friend who read the book as well, and we both thought that the entire elaborate story of the zoo animals and the improbable survival was just that -- a story. My friend commented that we're both too cynical ;). I suppose there are people who read the book and who do think that the zoo thing happened, but from the way I read it, it didn't, and it's just a way to cover the brutal ugliness of humanity that comes out during the months at sea. And I can see how belief is a big part of the story -- the author has some chapters previously on how things like religion occur because people want to believe in something better, in something beyond the ugly facts of life. Alas, I returned the book so I don't remember the exact wording.
So while I think the metafiction part of the story is interesting, part of me doesn't like the fact that all the parallels are quite distinctly spelled out. And I think that maybe other people were much more impressed with the twist at the end than I was.
So, entertaining, but not stupendously mindblowing.
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minnow1212's review
I'm not quite sure why this is a story that is supposed to make me believe in God, but then, I'm rather cynical about that to begin with. It's a very interesting book, definitely, and Pi has a sort of wide-eyed yet pragmatic narrative voice that makes for quite compulsive reading. I personally really liked the digressions, which branch into some very assorted topics (the swimming pools of Paris being one), but I suppose it could feel a little too exposition-y for others. I especially liked reading about Pi's attempts to train Richard Parker in an effort to stay alive. While it's a fun book, I'm still a bit confused as to why it won the Booker. I suppose it's because of the ending. But to be honest, I didn't think the ending was quite as mind-blowing as the author intended it to be.
Spoilers for the ending here:
I talked to a friend who read the book as well, and we both thought that the entire elaborate story of the zoo animals and the improbable survival was just that -- a story. My friend commented that we're both too cynical ;). I suppose there are people who read the book and who do think that the zoo thing happened, but from the way I read it, it didn't, and it's just a way to cover the brutal ugliness of humanity that comes out during the months at sea. And I can see how belief is a big part of the story -- the author has some chapters previously on how things like religion occur because people want to believe in something better, in something beyond the ugly facts of life. Alas, I returned the book so I don't remember the exact wording.
So while I think the metafiction part of the story is interesting, part of me doesn't like the fact that all the parallels are quite distinctly spelled out. And I think that maybe other people were much more impressed with the twist at the end than I was.
So, entertaining, but not stupendously mindblowing.
Links:
-
minnow1212's review
(no subject)
Thu, Jan. 6th, 2005 01:36 pm (UTC)While I found Pi's interest in various religions believable, I think it wasn't explored to the depth it could have been. It seems more a set piece to make Pi stand out more as a character than an actual belief, if that makes any sense. The issue was more tossed out in the open and then pushed aside during the giant ocean adventure.