Rating: 
Summary: my favourite book so far
Review: i like best in all books 'little women' but let's face it, who doesn't? so, i'd choose this as my best book. a really incredible book, the way Yann writes is attractive, and stunningly funny, there is no one in this world that could take that book off your hand and tell you do anything better than to continue reading..
just read it!
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Summary: Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life
Review: Early in the novel, Yann Martel is visiting the protagonist of the novel, Pi, and Pi's wife, who's existance Martel had not know of, walks in. Martel writes, "I start noticing small signs of conjugal existence. They were there all along, but I hadn't seen them because I wasn't looking for them." I think that, in some ways, what Martel is trying to say is hidden in that sentence; there is a God, and we will realize that if we will only look.The story is about Pi. He is a sixteen-year-old who is attracted to all religions and who possesses an immense faith in God. On a trip from India to Canada, his ship sinks, and he is stranded in a lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and Richard Parker, a tiger. What follows is the story (which serves as an enormous and multi-faceted metaphor) of his survival and the beautiful mystery of life he finds. Life of Pi is a supurbly constructed novel which, I think, has a lot to say. It is hugely compelling and entertaining. I have never been disappointed by a Booker Prize winning novel before, and Life of Pi definitely continues that tradition.
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Summary: The Hunger
Review: "This novel was born as I was hungry," says the opening line of Yann Martel's the Life of Pi. And, indeed, this is a novel about hunger. Hunger found in the stomach of its main character, Pi Patel who is stranded in a life boat after the ship he was travelling upon sinks into the Pacific; and hunger in the form of the Bengal Tiger that is trapped with him. It is about spiritual hunger as Pi's zest for life and religion leads him to become a practicing Muslim, Hindu, and Christian. And it is about the hunger for stories. Like the fictional author of the book, the adult Pi, too, hungers for stories. The house in Canada from where he relates the details of his boyhood adventure is filled with religious symbols and trinkets so that one gets the sense that it is a home brimming with tales ready to be told. But to paraphrase what Pi says of the Christian religion, this novel has but one story. All the stories coming before it are merely a prologue. And this one story only takes on its complete horrifying, yet life-affirming and spiritual eloquence in the final few pages, long after the reader feels the tale has reached its conclusion. Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Life of Piis its readability, its capacity to capture the reader from the outset and hold on page after page until the end. It is so rare that novels that have garnered the critical praise that the Life of Pi has received are as easy to read as a Stephen King yarn. But Martel has accomplished just that. His prose lures the reader into Pi's story with the ease of a skilled fisherman, and tightens the line at just the right time so that it is impossible to let go. The reader has no choice but to give in to the struggle and be led through the exquisite pain of Pi's ordeal willingly, craving for more, but not wishing to reach the end. Martel achieves this accomplishment through two very clever devices. He creates a character that is impossible not to love, and weaves the subtle details, that make the story believable, subtly into the context of the plot. From the opening descriptions of Pi's academic studies in Religion and Zoology, and his strange attachment for Richard Parker whom he seems to miss greatly, through his adventures at his family's zoo in India, to the stark, minimal existence of his days aboard a life boat, Pi is an immeasurably loveable character. We feel for him when he breaks his vegetarian existence, and share his horror upon discovering that what appears to be his salvation is actually a danger more voracious than the perils of the sea. He is such a gentle, loving person that when we approach the end of the novel we honestly don't believe this young, pacifistic young man is capable of committing even the slightest atrocity. Martel also pulls us in with the details of his characters, so finely integrated into the story that the has no hesitation to believe it is possible for young Pi to survive aboard the lifeboat with Richard Parker, the Bengal Tiger. Even the name Richard Parker conjures up familiar images of Poe's character and the alleged real life cabin boy who was devoured by his crew mates. Pi's understanding of and compassion for animals stems from his upbringing. His knowledge of the details of lion training, their habits in the wild, and their biology come to him so naturally that we accept them at face value. Martel knows that stories of man against the sea have existed since the dawn of civilisation, from ancient myth down through the years until the such products as the hit Tom Hanks film a few years back. We have a strange Oedipus complex with the ocean. It gave us birth and we are attached to it, yet we are continually aware of its temper and ability to deliver harsh punishments upon us. It is the ultimate metaphor for nearly anything an author wishes, forever constant and immortal, yet in a perpetual state of change. And Martel uses this natural metaphor to its full effect. But despite Life of Pi's façade as a novel of high adventure at sea, it is ultimately a profoundly psychological novel. It is at once a modern Robinson Crusoe and a contemporary Heart of Darkness. Through Pi's story we are brought into the belly of the whale with the depths of its darkness, and back out again into the light. This is a novel that makes us profoundly aware of the beast that lives within us all.
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Summary: To the Skeptic: This book is actually worth reading
Review: I had heard about this book for a while, I had read some brief descriptions, was mildly intrigued, but did not consider it seriously. Once I finally cracked it open and began to read, I was so intrigued, I finished it within the week. Why should you read this book? 1. It's genuinely funny. 2. It deals with religion in a quite unique way. It puts particular importance on a personal relationship with god within the religion(s). (The main character is a fervent believer in three different ones) 3. The book is supposedly based on a true story. How much is real? How much a fantasy of the author? It feels real as it describes reality in all it's wonder and brutality. It makes you think what would happen to you if you were stuck on a lifeboat alone in the Pacific ... with or without a Bengal Tiger.
Rating:
Summary: Gently stunning
Review: This is a beguiling story made all the more compelling by its interwoven strands of adventure and spirituality. In the hands of a less vigilant author, Yann Martel's tale might quickly have spiralled downward into dud sentimentality and bogus fantasy. But there is something in the book which somehow rings a quiet bell in one's inner self, the way all great novels do. It is about a journey against the odds as fate throws Piscine Molitor Pate together with an odd band of fellow travellers, suggestive of the way we ourselves are cast adrift at birth on our own personal odysseys - though not normally with zoo animals as companions. On some pages, I was reminded of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, a castaway who considers the universe while dealing with the mundane practicalities of staying alive. A gentle but stunning work.
Rating: 
Summary: Strong Finish
Review: The book's premise is unique. I must admit, however, I was skeptical at first. A boy and a tiger on a lifeboat adrift at sea - the concept seems somewhat far fetched. Nevertheless, Martel writes very convincingly and goes to great lengths to make the reader a believer. It starts off slow. At 354 pages it is a relatively short read and Pi (Martel's protagonist) doesn't find himself on the lifeboat until a third of the way through the book. That being said, the wait is well worth it. The ending is particularly good, especially if you enjoy twists.
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Summary: It's the Pi of the Tiger!
Review: The winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize is an extraordinary book. A boy, with a name that sounds like an obscenity, is the sole (soul) survivor of a shipwreck - along with a hyena, a zebra, an orang-utan, and a Royal Bengal Tiger called Richard Parker. However, it takes about a hundred pages before Piscine Molitor Patel (he was named after a swimming pool), is cast adrift in the swells of the Pacific Ocean, after Mrs Gandhi has invaded his family's comfort zone and forced them to flee to Canada. Before that happens, we learn a bit more about Pi's extraordinary childhood. He's lucky in that he has a mother who reads widely, and Pi is allowed to dip into her library, with only the ruder bits of literature being censored. In short, Pi would appear to be on a perpetual quest, always discovering new things. In comparison with his brother Ravi, who is the captain of the local cricket team, Pi is a bit of a loner, but a series of serendipities ensure his survival. The Patel family is secular, but Pi finds glory in religious practice(s). An encounter on the esplanade with three wise men leads to the discovery that Pi is a devout Hindu, Christian, and Muslim. As his brother Ravi observes, if Pi converted to the Jewish faith, then he would need only find three other religions to have a day of rest for every day of the week in perpetuity. Along the way, he finds two Mr Kumars, one a devout Muslim, and the other a devout atheist science teacher. Pi only reserves his scorn for Agnostics, the eternal doubters. It would appear important that Pi has such an abundance of faith. What else could get you through living with a ferocious tiger called Richard Parker on a small lifeboat? Mamaji says that Pi's story could make you believe in God. There's no doubting the power of Yann Martel's novel, but I cannot say that it gets me to believe in God. No, the importance of Life of Pi for me was the insistence on choosing a "better story". I'm sure this, more than anything else, must have helped sway the Man Booker judges to plump for this book. Even the Man Booker webpage accidentally plumped for this book when it erroneously announced Yann Martel as the winner the week before. It's the way a story is told, true or not, that earns its immortality. True, there are some improbable moments in Life of Pi, where our faith is tested, but Yann Martel is an excellent fisher of readers: we are on his hook, we may try to fight back with all our might, but in the end, all of us will have to admit that it is he who is in control throughout. At first sight, we seem to learn more about psychology rather than religious faith or God in this book. We see very little of Pi being sustained by religious faith - we are told about it, but we do not see it actually feeding him, except maybe in that bizarre anti-Eden of algae. No, this book seems more like an impassioned plea for the values of fiction itself. As the author of Life of Pi himself writes, "If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams". This sounds like a call to arms, and it's a call that I take up willingly (even if the narrator, like Holly in Rider Haggard's Gothic Romance She, would appear to be a fictional device, he does have an authentic tone).
But if you do happen to dive beneath the surface, you will find that there are quite a few religious concepts alluded to in the course of this novel. "Tsimtsum", for instance, is a term derived from Jewish mysticism, related to God's withdrawal or sinking from the universe... There are references to the various flood myths (like Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man, this novel delves in Jewish mysticism from the Kabbalistic Zohar branch). I believe that the concept of Tsimtsum also plays a major role in how Yann Martel has structured Life of Pi. There is something very circular in telling Pi's story in exactly 100 chapters. Also, when Pi uses pi to work out the circumference of that strange anti-Eden he lands on, you can't help but acknowledge that there is some great deal of thought in Yann Martel's naming of Pi, since pi is synonymous with circles. When God creates his vacuum, one can only imagine a circular shaped hole. Galaxies certainly resolve around black holes. Markandeya is also mentioned - he, like Pi, was also 16 when he was saved by his faith. When Pi is on the phone ordering Pizza, he says that his name is 'I am who I am' (in the same manner that God answers Moses' question about his identity).
Yann Martel has set this novel in a series of real locations that add a great deal of authenticity to this far out tale. I have created an in-depth web page that goes 'behind the scenes' of the Life of Pi, explaining all the references. Interested readers can contact me for details of this webpage - go armed to your readers group armed with all the facts! You can ever hear how 'prusten' sounds like, or just how unlucky it is to travel with someone called 'Richard Parker' (there was even a 'Clifford Richard Parker' on the Titanic!)
Rating: 
Summary: Comment from a translator
Review: I translated the book into Catalan (Barcelona? Does it ring a bell?), and I must say I don't find it so disappointing as some reviewers say. I am not referring to the religious aspects in the novel, but to the de-humanization, either on a boat or surrounded by thousands of people: when it comes to our survival, or our basic needs, we are beasts. It does not matter what we are taught by religions, or social conditions, or family values: when we badly need something, Mr Hyde takes over Dr Jekyll. And strictly about the novel: is the "adventure" disgustingly believable? Then I believe that the writer has achieved his goal.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!!!
Review: It seems that a few of the negative reviews are from non-english speaking countries. Maybe there is a problem in translation because I cannot see how anyone would find this book "mediocre" or "boring". It is truly a wonderful book. So much so, I wish I was back in a Literature class in college so I could have an intellectual discussion on it followed by a paper. So many themes flash through this book it makes it hard to know where to start dissecting it. An easy read that will keep your mind spinning for some time after. A wonderful book.
Rating:
Summary: A Jewel Worth Finding
Review: It was the jacket of this book that first caught my eye. The fanciful illustration of the boy and tiger in a little white boat, hoardes of sharks swimming below them, made me instant curious if the actual book itself would be the same way. I resisted buying it for a week or two, but I finally gave in - and was in no way disappointed. The narration is intelligent and easy to follow at the same time, and Yann Martel draws on many fresh sources to find humor. From the moment I started reading, I couldn't put it down. The days that Pi is lost at sea read like a dream, and all of the boy's hardships are your own. There is no way to express in words the sort of book this is, or how wonderfully Martel captured the entire event in words. I would reccommend this book to anyone, and already have given it to several people.
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