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Life Of Pi (Paperback)
by Yann Martel (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars 275 customer reviews (275 customer reviews)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Some books defy categorisation: Life of Pi, the second novel from Canadian writer Yann Martel, is a case in point: just about the only thing you can say for certain about it is that it is fiercely and admirably unique. The plot, if that’s the right word, concerns the oceanic wanderings of a lost boy, the young and eager Piscine Patel of the title (Pi). After a colourful and loving upbringing in gorgeously-hued India, the Muslim-Christian-animistic Pi sets off for a fresh start in Canada. His blissful voyage is rudely interrupted when his boat is scuppered halfway across the Pacific, and he is forced to rough it in a lifeboat with a hyena, a monkey, a whingeing zebra and a tiger called Richard. That would be bad enough, but from here on things get weirder: the animals start slaughtering each other in a veritable frenzy of allegorical bloodlust, until Richard the tiger and Pi are left alone to wander the wastes of ocean, with plenty of time to ponder their fate, the cruelty of the gods, the best way to handle storms and the various different recipes for oothappam, scrapple and coconut yam kootu. The denouement is pleasantly neat. According to the blurb, thirtysomething Yann Martel spent long years in Alaska, India, Mexico, France, Costa Rica, Turkey and Iran, before settling in Canada. All those cultures and more have been poured into this spicy, vivacious, kinetic and very entertaining fiction. --Sean Thomas --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Sunday Times, May 2002, reviewed by Margaret Atwood
Yann Martel’s third work of fiction, Life of Pi, is a terrific book. It's fresh, original, smart, devious, and crammed with absorbing lore. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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275 Reviews
5 star: 59%  (163)
4 star: 19%  (53)
3 star: 9%  (26)
2 star: 6%  (18)
1 star: 5%  (15)
 
 
 
 
 
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26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the greats, 1 Nov 2007
Of the three books I've recently read (the other two being McCrae's "Katzenjammer" and Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird"), LIFE OF PI was by far my favorte. The form and style are just so unique that you won't be able to put it down. Couple this with the fact that it's one heck of a story and the book is really part fact, fiction, and fable, and you've got the bestseller this is. Some parts are really graphic, and you'll be disturbed by some of the narrative, but that's what makes a good book.
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100 of 119 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Life and How to Live It, 14 Oct 2002
This review is from: Life Of Pi (Hardcover)
At the time of writing, Life of Pi is on the shortlist for the Booker Prize, and by the time of you reading this, it has either won (hurrah) or lost (hurroo). Because of the three novels I've read from the shortlist, Life of Pi stands head and shoulders above the others for being entirely original, good-natured, sparky (unlike the sluggish, grounded others), and extremely moreish: it took me only two days to navigate its 320 pages. You can put it down but it's such enjoyable fun why would you want to?

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?

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24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling and enjoyable modern fable, 11 Aug 2003
By Keith Wilson (St Andrews, Scotland) - See all my reviews
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Life of Pi is a book that works on many levels. On the surface, it is a highly implausible, yet ultimately compelling story of a boy who survives the sinking of a large