Rating: 
Summary: Life of Pi
Review: Absolutely amazing. Get into it, and you'll be captivated. It's now up there with my favorite books.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful Read
Review: This book was recommended to me by others in a religious studies group. It was one of the most unusual books I've ever read but one that I could not stop reading.
Rating:
Summary: A Marvelous Book
Review: This is the most original book I have read in a long while. I was absolutely transfixed with the story and with Martel's writing. I felt I had discovered a whole new world, and read and learned eagerly through the whole book. I was sorry to see it end, but the ending was both thought provoking and satisfying.As for the reviewers who quibble about whether or not the book does or does not make you believe in God, I say: Get over it. If you paid any attention at all to the pre-shipwreck part of the book, you would have understood why Pi would make that claim.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing, engrossing, enigmatic
Review: Fact or fiction? I read this book over the course of two days, reading late into the night and using up a rainy day. Who would imagine that 247 (or however many) days at sea could be so captivating? I had to keep reminding myself that this was a work of fiction - a fantasy, almost - born of a writer's mind and delivered up in paper, not flesh and blood. The enduring lesson is simply endurance; or maybe it's hope. Or maybe - as the twist is delivered in the end - it's about how we shield ourselves from the unbearable by devising a more bearable, though surely less credible tale. I found myself invested in the Life of Pi so much that I did not want to read the 'alternate' version he told to assuage the skeptical Japanese men. How could I care so much? This is, after all, just fiction...
Rating: 
Summary: Irrational Number?
Review: Winner of Britain's Man Booker Prize (the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature here), "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel is a tale about the power of story and the quest for truth that can best be described as Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" set on its proverbial ear. Call it "The Young Man, the Tiger, and the Sea." We'll get to the tiger later. Named after a famed pool in Paris, Piscine Molitor Patel lives out his young life amid the gentle bustle of life in Pondicherry, India. His father runs the sole zoo in the area, granting his son an education into the dark recesses of the animal psyche - a gift that will later save his life. At a time when young men turn their eyes to the fairer sex, Pi - adopting the moniker of the symbolic number in an effort to distance himself from his given name - turns his to the heavens, beginning a spritual quest that makes him perhaps the only Hindu/Muslim/Christian in all of India. Confounded by this spiritual synergy, everyone in his life is plunged into wondering about Pi's rationality. Rationality is soon at hand when the Patel family elects to leave India amid the crumbling of Indira Gandhi's government. When Pi is told that Canada is the destination and that the zoo animals will be sold off, he is left to grimly wonder about this new, foreign home. Setting out by cargo ship with his entire family for North America - along with a few animals destined for zoos in the States - his world is further devastated when the ship sinks in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. While the lighthearted story of this boy occupies the first bit of the book, the tale becomes as deeply, searingly intimate as the ocean is expansive, for Pi must now battle the elements and his own mind. If not for his friend Richard Parker, the only other survivor of the shipwreck, Pi tells us he surely would have gone mad. But Richard is not what we imagine. Gaining his name from an unfortunate clerical error, Richard Parker is far less of a man and far more of a 450 pound Bengal tiger. The ensuing tale of the teen who learns to live adrift on the ocean with a beast capable of crushing most of a human's bones with one swipe of the paw occupies the rest of the book. Martel weaves an utterly compelling and richly detailed tale of how one can survive not only the harsh cruelty of the open sea, but also the savage wildness of a primeval carnivore. Be forewarned: this book is unflinching in its portrayal of survival, harkening back to adventure novels of long ago that young men would devour page after page late into the night with a flashlight under the sheets. The squeamish should look for other reading material, as the day to day of Pi's fight to live is horrific. Martel glimpses life at its rawest, but in those very depths delivers a page-turner that is expertly told. And ultimately, "Life of Pi" is about the telling. It's about how stories transcend the mundane and lift us to truth, be it lofty, spiritual truth or the truth of making it through just one more day. Sadly, this is where Martel's creation stumbles. Pi's spiritual quest that prefaces the shipwreck becomes not so much a desire to know God, but a love affair with stories. Yet how can mere stories bring salvation and transcendence unless they are rooted in truth? The ending of the book casts serious doubt on not only the nature of truth, but also the meaning of story. At one point in the novel a character states that Pi's story can make you believe in God, but if we are to believe (or disbelieve) the tale of the young man, the tiger, and the sea, we are left to surmise that God is merely what we fabricate within us: a gauzy, white veil over a grim reality. By extension, if we have invented God, then truth is only what we subjectively create. For a book of this kind, it is a moral that consumes itself. So Martel's book concludes with disturbing questions (for those who search for profundity hard enough), virtually ensuring it to be a favorite among juries that award prizes to books. For the rest of us it is simply best to be lost in the story and appreciate whatever sections can be most appreciated, for in the end the sum of "Life of Pi" is less than the whole of its exceptionally well-crafted parts.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book of human endurance
Review: What would you do if you were stranded on a Lifeboat with a Hyena *gr rrr* a Tiger *growl* a orangutan and a Zebra?
Thats the story line. Martel also bring about religon though I dont feel that it has an impact on the survival of Pi. The book is good and has good dose of humor and grit built in.
How Pi gets his name is also beautiful. On the whole its a good read and once you start its difficult to keep down..
Rating:
Summary: Charming and Intelligent
Review: Yann Martel has created one of the most likeable characters in recent days- Pi is intelligent, charming, and amazingly captivating. With small glimmers of "The Old Man and the Sea," Martel develops the ocean into an unforgiving, vast, and mysterious character. But perhaps the crux of the book occurs at the end, when Martel forces the reader to question the events and stories, and their ultimate meaning, that occur in the book. An absolute must read. We hope Marel can top it off.
Rating:
Summary: All Talk - No Action.
Review: This book, though in many parts beautifully written (the sequence of the hills that lead to a different religious leader is a standout), has many lofty expectations, but drops the ball one too many times. The book has little to no narrative for the first 100 pages. Sure, it's educational (if you're interested in zoology), but far from entertaining. A big misstep the author makes is in shattering any wouldbe suspense with lines that are total "give aways" as to the duration of sequences. (Eg. Within the pages of the Pi's fourth day on the boat, Martel tells you that he would not be found for another 223. Therefore, any hopes that he may be saved/spared are lost.) Martel should've let the reader feel the hopelessness of the situation for themselves, instead of giving us a cheat sheet into the futures of all involved. (He makes similar mistakes when discussing the fates of the hyena and Richard way ahead of time.) Though somber, emotional, and practically poetic, the book is about 100 pages too long. The book's claim to make the reader believe in God is unusual and (worse) doesn't achieve its goal.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing special
Review: Like many others I read this at the recommendation of a friend. It was a struggle to read, bringing to mind the horror of having to read Old Man and the Sea back in high school. I don't argue that the book is unimaginative, it's just that NONE of the ideas struck me as new. It's an awfully long book to ultimately be so unoriginal.
Rating:
Summary: Without looking back
Review: There are so many images in my mind after reading this book. The collection of animals, and bugs, on the lifeboat;the last glimpse of Richard Parker;the mysterious island-what visual magic Yann Martel writes! I loved the exploration of what the point of religion is in the end, no matter what form it takes. I loved the questions raised on many levels. I highly recommend this book. Savor and enjoy.
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