Life of Pi

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Book should be read by all!
Review: This is truly among the best books I have ever read. As of today, it has won the prestigious Booker Award. The story can be read on multiple levels and can be interpreted a number of ways, but from the first page it grabs you. Besides the tale on the high seas, you also learn about the character's life in India and about the zoo his father owns. Among other messages here (mentioned in other reviews), is definitely an envirnmnetalist one about zoo-keeping and our responsiblity in it. The book has left me overcome with joy, wishing to share it with everyone. Having said all of this, I can also say that the book is an easy read and I am almost ready to give it to my 10 year old (except for the very graffic death and eating scenes of various animals) I can not say enough about this marvelous book!!

Rating:
Summary: Don't read the reviews, just read the book
Review: You will learn a thing or two, maybe more, and be pulled along on the current of this sometimes gruesome, often gripping, and always sincere tale of a boy caught in a situation we can only pray to not experience ourselves outside the pages of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Far and Beyond the best!
Review: This book is wonderful. The story is engrossing, the descriptions and little side stories are amusing and interesting. Everything about this book screams CLASSIC! No matter what kind of books you like, you will like this book. Nuff said!

Rating:
Summary: Over the top
Review: I must preface these comments by saying that I read Yann Martel's yarn after hearing nothing but raving reviews. In particlular, that it was "extrememly deep" and "will make you think for weeks". The jacket cover and introduction gave the same impression, with their (unhelpfully) ironic statements about making the reader a believer in God.

Without recounting the story, which has been done several times here, I'll get right to the point. The allegory is laid a little too thick. And Pi is just a little too cute for my tastes. It all gets tiresome after a while.

That being said, there are some beautifully descriptive passages and it's an entertaining tale. But when finished, it disappears like fog under a burning Pacific sun.

Rating:
Summary: zoology, botany, religion...and a hell of a story
Review: I just finished Story of Pi and am now pondering how many of my friends might enjoy the recommendation. Honestly, I think they will all be fascinated by the account of a boy, a castaway from a devestating shipwreck, surviving 227 days on a small life boat with a tiger. Told as if it is a biography, Life of Pi is both gripping and powerful with profound philosophical implications. Yet, it is not written as an allegory. As a reader, you easily accept the premise that this boy, Pi, has only a tiger as a companion and so must balance his life on the reft between surviving the elements and surviving the tiger.

This book has been nominated here in the UK for the Booker Prize (the biggest prize for fiction in the UK) and deserves every accolade. The philosophy and biology is so beautifully well done that you don't even realize you have been instructed. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing Adventure
Review: Named after a Parisian swimming pool, Piscine Molitor Patel is growing up in Pondicherry, India. When he tires of being called "Pissing" by cruel children and well-meaning teachers who mispronounce his first name, he begins calling himself "Pi."

His father, head of the Pondicherry Zoo, teaches Pi and his older brother, Ravi, to respect both the power and the unpredictability of wild animals. Other life lessons follow, as young Pi experiments with religion as a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian, in his quest to draw nigh to God.

When Pi is sixteen, his father sells the zoo and makes plans to move his family to Canada. His wife and two sons reluctantly join him on the Tsimtsum, the Japanese cargo ship transporting animals from the defunct zoo.

One night, Pi hears a noise that jolts him from his sleep. Unable to rouse Ravi, he sets off to investigate. It becomes clear that the ship is sinking, but rising water prevents Pi from warning his family. Crewmembers thrust him toward a lifeboat just before the Tsimtsum succumbs to the Pacific.

Orphaned and stunned, Pi drifts in the lifeboat with a huge tiger named Richard Parker, an orangutan named Orange Juice, an ugly hyena and a beautiful Zebra with a broken leg.

Soon after, the hyena kills the zebra and the orangutan. Richard Parker emerges from his den at the bottom of the lifeboat and kills the hyena.

Terrified Pi somehow establishes awkward boundaries with the tiger and is spared. As the lifeboat drifts in the blue water, Pi faces life, death and miracles - all of which bring him closer to God.

"The Life of Pi" is an amazing adventure written with intelligence and grit. As Pi makes his trek toward land, the reader takes an unbelievable rollercoaster ride. Martel is one of six authors shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2002, the UK's best known literary award for "The Life of Pi."

Rating:
Summary: Close to Perfection
Review: This book was incredible - a wonderful character in Pi, a great adventure story on the surface with so many other levels. A book to go back to and live with long after the last page is read. A readers dream.

Rating:
Summary: reductio ad absurdum
Review: Life of Pi is elegant in the pure simplicity of language and story. In this we can find both its flaw and its treasure. Where "Jonathon Livingston Seagull" and "The Little Prince" left off, "Life of Pi" continues. The story seems to try too hard to leave you with that transcendental, spiritual ephiphany and it often falls short of its goal. The story is typical of the genre, reducing very broad "philosophical" or "political" boundaries into extremely pleasant little parables. It is not a story of a boy and a tiger; but rather, it is an examination of relationships with "unrealistic" boundary conditions. Society as a whole has been reduced to it's simplest form: one boat with disparate characters that forces the issue of reconciling typical prejudices and social parameters.
This novel broaches the subject of religion as a very personal experience and if there is one true moral in here it's the acceptance and embracing of culture and all religion. It may make someone believe in God as it promises, but it doesn't attempt to tell you which one.
In summary:
It's a nice story but don't expect to be changed by it.
It's a nice story but it's not a literary masterpiece.
It's a nice story that is simple and uncomplicated.
It's a nice story and nothing more.
It's a nice story and I really enjoyed it.

Rating:
Summary: Beyond Expectations
Review: If something inexplicable has lured you to this book, purchase it immediately. If someone suggested that you explore it, please do. It speaks to the heart and soul with striking depth, yet it provides much laughter. A beautiful story that doesn't hide behind anything.

Rating:
Summary: Lifts the Spirit
Review: I found this book heroic and rather transcendental at times. Beautiful in the writing and in the larger context of life.