Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Life of Pi
After the sinking of a cargo ship, a single solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the surface of the wild, blue Pacific. The crew of the surviving vessel consists of a hyena, an orang-utan, a zebra with a broken leg, a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger and Pi Patel, a 16-year-old Indian boy. The stage is set for one of the most extraordinary pieces of literary fiction in recent years, a novel of such rare and wondrous storytelling that it may, as one character claims, make you believe in God. Can a reader reasonably ask for anything more?
This book was actually a little tedious for much of it, bot pre- and post- shipwreck. Pre because, knowing it was coming, you're kind of just waiting for the book to get on with it to that part, and post for somewhat obvious reasons. Being on a lifeboat for 227 days, while it might have moments of interest and adventure, is largely dull and monotonous. And frankly, certain parts of the book were also a little dull and monotonous.
I did like the way he chose to tell the story, though. A story of 227 days of floating on the ocean wouldn't really make sense if you told it chronologically, because that would suggest that the castaway had some sense of the chronology going on, and that's obviously not going to be the case. So with the exception of a few notable events that one might remember approximately the order they happened in, most everything else was told in more of a, "this chapter will be about learning to catch fish," or, "this chapter will be about taming the tiger," and so on. Things that flowed into each other in terms of timing, but that make sense to tell together.
Where the story really got interesting, though, was at the end, when Pi is explaining his ordeal to some Japanese men who are investigating why their ship sank at all. They don't believe his story, so he offers them an alternate version, in which there are no animals, but instead other people, with fairly obvious parallels between the two stories. So the book really leaves you wondering if the version with the tiger is the true story, or if Pi simply convinced himself it was true because it was much less horrifying than the real version. I don't really want to go into detail about the ending, although I wonder if even mentioning the alternate story is saying too much. In any case, the end forces you to really think back on the rest of the book, and wonder... Which is very well done on Martel's part.
Next up: Operation Storm City, book III in the Guild of Specialists trilogy by Joshua Mowll
After the sinking of a cargo ship, a single solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the surface of the wild, blue Pacific. The crew of the surviving vessel consists of a hyena, an orang-utan, a zebra with a broken leg, a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger and Pi Patel, a 16-year-old Indian boy. The stage is set for one of the most extraordinary pieces of literary fiction in recent years, a novel of such rare and wondrous storytelling that it may, as one character claims, make you believe in God. Can a reader reasonably ask for anything more?
This book was actually a little tedious for much of it, bot pre- and post- shipwreck. Pre because, knowing it was coming, you're kind of just waiting for the book to get on with it to that part, and post for somewhat obvious reasons. Being on a lifeboat for 227 days, while it might have moments of interest and adventure, is largely dull and monotonous. And frankly, certain parts of the book were also a little dull and monotonous.
I did like the way he chose to tell the story, though. A story of 227 days of floating on the ocean wouldn't really make sense if you told it chronologically, because that would suggest that the castaway had some sense of the chronology going on, and that's obviously not going to be the case. So with the exception of a few notable events that one might remember approximately the order they happened in, most everything else was told in more of a, "this chapter will be about learning to catch fish," or, "this chapter will be about taming the tiger," and so on. Things that flowed into each other in terms of timing, but that make sense to tell together.
Where the story really got interesting, though, was at the end, when Pi is explaining his ordeal to some Japanese men who are investigating why their ship sank at all. They don't believe his story, so he offers them an alternate version, in which there are no animals, but instead other people, with fairly obvious parallels between the two stories. So the book really leaves you wondering if the version with the tiger is the true story, or if Pi simply convinced himself it was true because it was much less horrifying than the real version. I don't really want to go into detail about the ending, although I wonder if even mentioning the alternate story is saying too much. In any case, the end forces you to really think back on the rest of the book, and wonder... Which is very well done on Martel's part.
Next up: Operation Storm City, book III in the Guild of Specialists trilogy by Joshua Mowll