by:
Yann Martel Average Rating:
Product Description:Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable
Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting 'religions the way a dog attracts fleas.' Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker ('His head was the size and color of the lifebuoy, with teeth'). It sounds like a colorful setup, but these wild beasts don't burst into song as if co-starring in an anthropomorphized Disney feature. After much gore and infighting, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive: 'It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion.'
An award winner in Canada (and winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize),
Life of Pi, Yann Martel's second novel, should prove to be a breakout book in the U.S. At one point in his journey, Pi recounts, 'My greatest wish--other than salvation--was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One that I could read again and again, with new eyes and fresh understanding each time.' It's safe to say that the fabulous, fablelike
Life of Pi is such a book.
--Brad Thomas Parsons
Rating:
-
Almost total perfection!
I have to give Yann Martel much deserved credit for setting out to entertain and entrance the reader with a wholly unique kind of adventure that ranks with works that go as far back as GULLIVAR'S TRAVELS and ROBINSON CRUSOE--only this is far wilder and weirder than you could ever imagine.(I only question the author's way of ending the story). Another good read making the rounds is SIMON LAZARUS by M.A.Kirkwood. This is also a completely fufilling and unique read that will have you laughing and shaking ...
Read More
Rating:
-
Fascinating but forgettable
Yann Martel is probably very intelligent, and this book is witty and amusing and probably even insightful and I get the feeling that everything is one huge metaphor for something else, yet this feeling is accompanied by one of sheer bafflement at what it is exactly Martel is trying to say. I can tell its getting at something deep, something important, but I'll be damned if I know what it is. Damned. From a purely structural point of view, the bit before the boat sinks is highly entertaining, the floating ...
Read More
Rating:
-
A delightful, simply-great, multi-faceted read
This is one of those books that, upon closing the back cover, I was holding it close and wondering: "Just want am I going to read now?!" I found that I read it in fits and starts so that it wouldn't be finished too soon. Though, I couldn't stop thinking about Pi as the days passed...wondering what he and Richard Parker (the very large tiger with whom he's stranded on that life boat) were facing. At the end of it all, I found myself wondering just how a guy can write a book so full of wonder. I found myself ...
Read More
