Life of Pi (Paperback)

Personally I found this to be a pleasant change from the standard happy, neatly tied-off endings I see far too much of in modern day literature. Instead it leaves the story to continue on through the readers mind in the days and possibly week's worth of deep thoughts it will inevitably evoke. I have yet to meet any two people who agree with the way they interpreted the ending, it has to be said that this is the books main genius. A person can see a whole range of deep meanings in the book, depending on their perception.

The novel claims to be a story that will make you believe in God, I suppose this would depend on your perception of the story, but for me personally it did nothing of the sort. It did however, spark off a great deal of thought, and for a story to make an atheist such as myself think long and hard about the fairly strong religious theme to the book is quite an accomplishment.

All in all, "Life Of Pi" is a compelling read that certainly has the potential to alter your view on life. I recommend it to readers who enjoy deep thought as a contemporary work of art, and to people who prefer a lighter read as a highly enjoyable adventure story. Yann Martel deservedly won the Booker Prize for this outstanding novel, and I can only hope it becomes as timeless as classics of a similar calibre.

The blurb is somewhat misleading, suggesting that Life of Pi is only about the travails of a boy trapped on a lifeboat with a tiger: in fact there are 100 pages before this main event. But the miracle is that even when restricted to one human character and a twenty-odd foot lifeboat, Martel is never boring, and never resorts to childish anthropormism with the animals either: Pi really does have to survive with a 450-pound Bengal tiger, hungry and uncartoonish and nearby.

Speaking of miracles, the narrator's pushy insistence throughout the book that it will "make you believe in God" is the only chunk of the novel I couldn't quite swallow. There's no godliness whatsoever - unless it's moving in mysteriously subtle ways or something and I'm just too much of an atheistic blockhead to see it - unless you count the instances of Pi praising God when something good happens to interrupt the terrible attrition of life on the lifeboat. And frankly who wouldn't hedge their bets a bit in such a situation? In fact, thinking of it, one particularly memorable section of the book - the island, a staggeringly inventive set piece which put me in mind of the land of the mulefa in Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass - indicates, if anything, evolution at work rather than Creation, and the narrator even makes respectful mention of Darwin.

However. This small gripe does nothing to detract from the fact that Life of Pi will have you grinning like a tiger for days. Prize-winner or not, if it doesn't become a classic in the next few years, I'll eat that carton of emergency rations. Well he won't be needing it will he?