Life of Pi

Author: Yann Martel
Recommended Age: Adult
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN-10: 0676973779
ISBN-13: 978-0676973778
Year Published: 2002
No. Pages: 356
Genre: Fantasy
Main Character Gender: Male
Read & Reviewed by: Brahm



You are in a bar. If you have never been in a real bar imagine the dull buzz of alcohol blurring your thoughts, cigar smoke bombarding your nostrils with a burning yet vaguely pleasing smell and possibly you are thinking of refilling your glass. The alarmingly hairy man beside you at the bar leans in and whispers in a drunken slur, “Wanna riddle?” Not pausing for an answer, he whispers, “There is a Christian, a Muslim and a Buddhist sitting in a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific. They are all sitting on the same bench. The bench is 18 inches wide. The average man's bottom is 12 inches wide, so no two, let alone three, men could fit comfortably on an 18 inch surface. So how do you think they fit on the bench?” The punch line is- they are all Pi Patel.

Life of Pi is a fictional biography of Piscine Patel, nicknamed Pi, named after a famous French swimming pool. When the ship, in which the sixteen year-old and his zoo-keeping family take to emigrate from India to Canada sinks, Pi is left as the sole human survivor in a lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a tiger. Eventually, Pi and the tiger, Richard Parker, are the only ones left. Will they survive each other and being lost at sea?

I loved this book because it is an adventure story. Somehow a boy and a Bengal tiger have to survive 227 days lost at sea. This is a unique plot and I have never read anything like it before. The plot itself is simple but this novel is multi-layered in terms of how it deals with ideas of religion, survival, and man against beast. This book has more than its fair share of fantastical elements and can be considered magical realism. For example, Martel incorporates aquatic mere-cats, carnivorous algae and floating islands into the setting which by themselves aren't believable but he weaves them into the story in a way that had me convinced they exist.

This novel enabled me to learn a little more about religion. Pi believes himself to be a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian. I didn't know much about these religions but after reading the novel, I gained more insight into them. Pi brought his religion with him and lived a spiritual life at sea. As a character, he was complex. I found his mind confusing and I loved piecing together what he was thinking.

This is extremely detailed, slightly confusing book might put off less advanced readers. It most certainly is not not the sort of book to get your young, young readers started on but I would recommend it to anyone who is older than eleven and an advanced reader.

I rated this book 9.869604401 out of 10 because I deeply enjoyed the witty, twisting humour and the way I could always see the world Pi saw. Martel created a very visual world. Not for impatient readers, those who live for uncovering detail and savouring description will want to read and re-read paragraphs to allow this incredible writing to sink in. This highly entertaining read is by far one of my favourite books. This novel received the Man Booker Prize in 2002.