Life of Pi

Rating:
Summary: good read
Review: i bought this book from the reviews on this site i thought the first 90 pages were at times a little dry to get mostly the parts dealing with his journeys through spiritual enlightenment but the descriptions about zoo life leading up to the big journey on the boat which end up with pi being on a life boat with a zebra,hyena,and a tiger.I found really amazing what you might eat when confronted with hunger mainly in reference to the tiger which you will reconize if you read this book.
Did find a little bit a little hokey ( unbeliveable ) concerning the island but it is fiction and you need a little imagination all in all good book and was glad i read it and would recommend to others

Rating:
Summary: Shipwrecks and Bengal tigers....
Review: Life of Pi combines great writing and great storytelling in the epic tradition of classics such as Moby Dick. I choose that comparison because both novels are accounts of heroic struggles at sea. But beyond that obvious similarity, the beauty and power of both lie not only in the adventures they describe, but also in the profound messages that each conveys. Moby Dick is a chilling character study of a man driven by ego and revenge. Life of Pi is a joyous celebration of love and survival.

Having just put down this book, I am hard-pressed to decide which will stay with me longer - the magnificent story itself, or its many profound insights. Who could resist a story like this? Pi Patel, son of a zookeeper in India and devout Hindu, Christian, and Muslim (yes, simultaneously, much to the chagrin of his three religious advisors), loses his whole family in a shipwreck and finds himself drifting through the Pacific Ocean in a lifeboat with an orangutan, a zebra, a hyena, and a Bengal tiger. Basic food chain principles dictate that the number of castaways dwindles quickly to two, and the boy and tiger spend the rest of the novel learning to cohabitate in tight quarters - not to mention avoid starvation and survive the elements.

But that's not all, for Yann Martel weaves into this fabulous adventure messages that cut to the core of humanity and its place in the universe. He explores many themes, but two stand out: the nature of faith and religion, and coexistence of man and beast on earth. Both are covered elegantly and with great meaning. Pi's touchingly naive desire to worship god in multiple churches, and his well-reasoned arguments for why this should not be frowned upon, raise (and answer) important questions about human spirituality. And the interdependence of all living creatures is gracefully explored through the discussions of zoo life, and animal behavior, and most profoundly, through the powerful bonds that develop between man and tiger while at sea.

As a closing thought, the one other book that I will compare this to is Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. Life of Pi is filled with the same kind of magic and mysticism, and in a similar way reveals the beauty inherent in the simple mysteries of life.

The Man Booker Prize has made an excellent selection this year.

Rating:
Summary: TRIPPY
Review: This is like alice in wonderland and Huckleberry fin with animals and a deeply ever present spiritual undercurrent. It read like a fairy tale about a boy going down the river with a bunch of animals and you come away from it thinking, pondering, and taking note of the spirituality the abounds in every aspect of our lives. Another spiritual thought provoking book that I like is called, I Talked To God And He Wants To Talk To You. It's not about animals or anything though. It's just some dudes random thoughts about God. But it makes you think. I love books that make you think

Rating:
Summary: No pie in the Life of Pi
Review: I loved the conceit of the plot: boy and tiger in life boat. As a well-illustrated childrens' book---perhaps with pop-up pages---it would have worked. But by page 200, the Life of Pi sinks, along with the reader's expectation of epiphany, of hoping to discover one lasting moment or lesson.

Mark this: those who tout this book as a paean to spiritual awakening and endurance are wrong. What happens here is the boy survives. It happens to people and is often heoric. That Pi has has to surive under such contrived circumstances is survival caricature. It is embarrassing and suggests an artist inability to write about the tough and magnificant human spirit. We learn nothing from this book, carry away no experience, look for and find no parable in the story that illuminates.

The book jacket suggests that the Life of Pi may "make you believe in God." Perhaps good writing can do just that, for a minute or forever. Certainly, there is no glimpse of the divine in the Life of Pi.

Rating:
Summary: Symbols
Review: Just finished and still digesting. Clearly the mathematical and rational (but irrational) nature of Pi is significant. The journey taking 227 days evokes the fractional definition of pi --22/7. i'm sure that there are other symbols throughout the book.

Rating:
Summary: Deceptively Simple....
Review: The Life of Pi presents itself as nothing more than a simple variation on the "road trip" novel, in which a character's physical locomotion parallels personal growth. In so doing, Yann Martel manages to write a book which conveys the meaning of growing up, while balancing the future with the past, as well as what it means to observe the world.

(DO NOT READ ON UNLESS YOU HAVE FINISHED THE BOOK!)

As a boy, Piscine stems from a profound collection of opposites: his various religious choices, the friends he makes, even his two nicknames (Pissing and Pi) all come from diametrically different areas. The struggle between Zoology and Theology (which reflect the dual nature of humanness) is paralleled by the massive zoological garden complex, in its gallery of life, animal and human, of both the worst bestiality and the grandest valour.

The cataclysmic event in Pi's life, however, provokes his transition from youth into adulthood. As the cargo ship sinks, it comes time for the deserted boy to "put away childish things", and so the microcosm of his previous life (the menagerie of his companions) begins to dwindle, even as his relationship with his past life fades into the vast expanse of the pacific. By stripping away the layers surrounding his young self (e.g., the animals, which in turn recall aspects of his previous life), Martel shows us that in order to grow up, we must perform that Descartian task of isolating ourselves, and breaking away of who we were when we saw "things darkly, as if through a glass".

Yet Pi's remarkable tale does not simply end with the complete erosion of identity-rather, once the externalities of his identity have been stripped away, the opposites vanish, and he is free to build slowly and carefully his true self-to tame his internal tiger. Hence he and Richard Parker become one and the same, as evidenced by their simultaneous loss of vision, and similar recoveries on the mysterious island. (My best guess on the selection of the feline's name relates to misinterpretation [recall that the tiger's real name is "thirsty", so it too bears a misleading moniker like "Pi"], or [more prosaically] a park is like a pool/piscine).

Like most readers, I had trouble with the two final episodes of the travelogue, namely, the run in with the chef and the island of algae. Perhaps the meeting of the chef while blinded is Oedipal (as in like Oedipus the King, who is blinded when he sees reality-not Freud's complex)--a superior truth arrives independent of and superior to the eyes, which, ironically, only mislead. Still, I do not find this completely satisfying. (I wonder if perhaps this were a relic of a previous version of the manuscript in which the "true" course of events was never stated explicitly, rather it was hinted at through things like this and the line, when the Zebra dies "it was then I knew my family was dead").

The island of the algae is perhaps even more confusing: initially, I found it totally out of place within this work. However, with some thought, I have tried to rationalise its place: in terms of the allegory, it must represent his return to society, and his need to continue to delude himself (the "truth" of the matter burns his feet and will kill him). With regard to the final mystery, I am ambivalent about whose teeth lie within the leaves. Are they those of the reader, who has also been lured into, and digested by, Pi's fictional worldview? Or are they of some literary predecessor to whom Martel wishes to pay homage? Perhaps they are those of the author himself, for out of his mouth/pen grew Pi's entire universe.

Finally, I was disappointed by the lack of elegance in the explanation of the story (it recalled a Dragnet-type ending). I feel the book would have been strengthened by building to it over time--I expect, however, that sales-conscious publishers forced Martel to dumb it down. I also gripe with the story of Pi post-arrival: if he has truly grown up in the voyage, his studying of zoology/theology seems out of character, though this is a minor point. At least we see his religious convictions have attained some sense of stasis.

To sum up this overly long review, I was blown away by this work, which I thought would be nothing more than a well-written (or else would not have earned the Booker Prize) piece of entertaining fiction. What I found instead was a fantastic mediation on the life of the past within the present, and a counterpoint to the Oedipal need to seek absolute truth. Indeed, with regard to our experience, Martel shows us that, in the words of Louis MacNiece,

"There is no road that is right entirely."

P.S.: "It is better to be late Mr. Patel than the late Mr. Patel" -- Indian Proverb

Rating:
Summary: What a journey
Review: Life of Pi is by far one of the best stories I have ever read. I could not put down the book. Yann Martel has a true gift for the imagination. I hightly recommend this book to anyone that loves adventure. I have recommended this book to everyone I know but will not part with mine as I intend to read it again and again. Incredible story telling.

Rating:
Summary: A journey from Innocence to Experience.
Review: I originally thought, cynically, that Jann Martel had chosen the subject of "Survival" because, as he himself said at the beginning of his novel, his second book went nowhere and therefore he would find a subject with appeal. Survivor stories on TV are popular. However, he had no ordinary survivor story of a group of adults on a remote island. This was a young boy surviving for 7 months on an open boat and home-made raft on the Pacific Ocean with a live, wild tiger! I have changed my view and see this as a journey from "Innocence" to "Experience" Martel chose a tiger from William Blake's poem "The Tyger" in his series "Songs of Experience" and the Indian boy represents the "Little Black Boy" from "Songs of Innocence". A remarkable novel.
Elaine Bunbury author, "What Hope Have You!"

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not Great
Review: I am a farmer, not a book critic, so I may not appreciate and understand all of the potential subtleties and symbolism of this novel. I certainly do not understand the heaps of praise given to this book. Nevertheless, I will attempt to give my brief opinion, which differs from most others, and risk receiving many "not helpful" votes.

The Life of Pi is clearly a good book, but it is not a great work. At the beginning of the book, the author reminds the reader of the many religious faiths and beliefs by introducing several characters. In one great act of discontinuity, these characters are discarded as Pi journeys to Canada. At this point, we must suspend disbelief, as we are asked to accept many highly unlikely events. Such events include the unexplained opening of the animal cages before the ship abruptly sinks, 450-lb tiger crawling effortlessly into a 26-foot lifeboat, the flesh-eating island, the chance head-on meeting with a freighter and another castaway, the small lifeboat remaining upright for 200+ days in the open seas, etc. I'm willing to accept these improbabilities if the story is entertaining and meaningful, but the survival story becomes quickly mired in details and drags on for far too many pages.

If you become bored with the lengthy tiger survival story, just skip ahead to Part III and the author will very clearly spell out the meaning of the book. We are told that the tiger survival story may indeed be fantasy, and we are provided with a brief alternative, which is more probable. Lacking any definite proof, as with religion, we are left to choose the "better" story; however "better" is not defined. Better in terms of what? that which offers better rewards? that which makes you feels better? that which is most probable and does not insult reason? I can't abandon the latter in favor of the former. In short, Martel uses far too many pages to make such a simple point.

Rating:
Summary: Outsanding!
Review: Yann Martel's "Life of Pi", is breathtakingly original, beautifully written, and a wonderful story. The two sections, one with Pi as a schoolboy in India, and the second with him lost at sea are both fantastic. The ending is marvelous. If you think most of today's bestsellers are intellectual junk food, you will consider "Life of Pi" a gourmet feast! This book is simply an astonishing feat, and is not to be missed.