I put a message in the bottle: 'Japanese-owned cargo ship Tsimtsum, flying Panamanian flag, sank July 2nd, 1977, in Pacific, four days out of Manila. Am in lifeboat. Pi Patel my name. Have some food, some water, but Bengal tiger a serious problem. Please advise family in Winnipeg, Canada. Any help very much appreciated. Thank you.'I have read no other account of a castaway upon the sea as incredible as this one. Martel is a master, Pi is a hero. The Bengal tiger, Richard Parker, is the supreme friend to be stuck in a lifeboat with for 277 days on the Pacific. And when you include various other exotic animals, fish, storms, carnivorous tree-algae, and of course a mad French cannibal cook, you find a story unparalleled in human history. Outrageous you say? Every next breath we take is an outrage, that this globe should go on spinning a supreme act of defiance. It makes them no less true.
The Life of Pi is surely a story which needs to be read more than once. It begins and you will suspect it to be some philosophical work, perhaps a bit ponderous and somewhat pretentious, but in very little time you will forget about all the metaphysical ruminating and be caught up in the very life of the story. Living in a small lifeboat while a hyena and orangutan duke it out and a Bengal tiger sleeps leaves you little brainpower left for theological questions. And just when you think you've got a handle on this story and it hasn't any more to surprise you with--after a floating land of meerkats who eat mysteriously dead fish--The Life of Pi savagely turns on you and slaps you several times in the face. Martel deftly sets up a scene that is not only hysterical, but a brilliant summation of the book. The interrogation scene between the two Japanese men and Pi in Mexico is beautiful dialog--better than any I have read in a good while.
Martel writes very well, but he thinks even better. You will spend many days thinking about The Life of Pi after you finish it. As will any book with such lines as: "Isn't telling about something--using words, English or Japanese--already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?"
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