Customer Reviews

Life of Pi

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you haven't read the Life of Pi you are in for a treat. Originally published in 2002, this is a new illustrated edition and it is simply wonderful.

A teenaged boy is shipwrecked and set adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with some unusual companions; a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a fierce Bengal tiger. They drift together for a long time as this savage and philosophical tale plays out.

The addition of 40 illustrations by Tomaslav Torjanac is an incredible enhancement to the book. His pictures are brilliant and colorful. Some seem almost photographic.

Re-reading the book was an absolute pleasure. I caught things I missed the first time through.

After the sinking of a cargo ship only one lifeboat remains on the Pacific - housing a teen named Pi, a hyena, a zebra and a Royal Bengal tiger. Their survival and journeys makes for a winning book which transcends children's or young adult fiction to provide all ages with a gorgeous, winning contemporary folk story, and this deluxe edition is the perfect gift for capturing it all, using lovely drawings by Croatian artist Tomislav Torjanac to capture key scenes in Martel's drama. A top pick not just for library holdings, but for gift-giving.

Life of Pi was a fairly engaging story in terms of plot and character, but what made it such a memorable book, for me at least, was its thematic concerns. Basically, this is one of the most thematically interesting and thought-provoking books I've read in a while, even though it's a fairly simple story. Is it a "story that will make you believe in God," as Pi claims? I'm not sure I'd go that far, but I would say that many people who enjoy thinking about the nature of reality and the possibility of God would find this a compelling read.

To me, the entire thrust of the book [SPOILER ALERT] is aimed at the idea that reality is a story, and therefore we can choose our own story (as the author himself put it). So if life is a story, that leaves us two basic choices: we can limit ourselves only to what we can know for sure - that is, to "dry, yeastless factuality" - or we can choose "the better story." I suppose in Pi's world the "better story" includes God, but he doesn't suggest that this is the only meaningful possibility. In fact, Pi calls atheists his "brothers and sisters of a different faith," because, like Pi, atheists "go as far as the legs of reason will carry them - and then they leap."

Pi's point, in my opinion, is that human experience always involves interpretation, that our knowledge is necessarily limited, that both religious belief and atheism require a leap of faith of one kind or another. It's not that you must believe in God to be happy (even though Pi clearly finds peace in his beliefs); rather, the important thing is that you make a choice to bring meaning and richness to your life, that you look beyond pure, uninterpreted fact and find a better reality, that you exercise faith and strive for ideals (whatever the object of your faith and whatever those ideals might be ). Or as Pi himself puts it: "To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."

In the end, I didn't necessarily read this book as an invitation to believe in God, but rather as a mirror held up to the reader, a test to see what kind of worldview the reader holds. [SPOILER ALERT] That is, as Pi himself says, since "it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with the animals or the story without the animals?" Or, as I took it: Is it my nature to reach for and believe the better but less likely story? Or do I tend to believe the more likely but less lovely story? What view of reality do I generally adhere to?

Another equally important question is this: How did I come by my view of reality? Do I view the world primarily through the lens of reason? Or do I view it through the lens of emotion? For Pi, I think it's safe to say his belief comes by way of emotion. He has, as one reviewer noted, a certain scepticism about reason (in fact, Pi calls it "fool's gold for the bright"). Pi also has what I would call a subtle but real basis for his belief in God, namely, "an intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and ultimate purpose." But belief still isn't easy for him. Despite his trusting sense of purpose, Pi acknowledges that "Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer." So it's not that a life of faith is easier, in Pi's opinion, it's that for him belief is ultimately more worthwhile.

This is not to say, however, that Pi holds a completely postmodern view of God or that he believes in God as a matter of art rather than in a sincere way. [SPOILER ALERT] True, Pi suggests that whether you believe his story has a tiger in it is also a reflection of your ability to believe in something higher. And of course it's easy to read Pi's entire story as an attempt to put an acceptable gloss on a horrific experience. Still...there are a number of clues throughout the book that give the reader at least some reason to believe that Pi's story DID have a tiger in it (for instance, the floating banana and the meerkat bones). As such, Pi's two stories could be seen as an acknowledgement that both atheism and belief in God require some faith, and therefore it's up to each of us to choose the way of life that makes us the happiest. He's not necessarily saying that the truth is what you make it, he's saying we don't have unadulturated access to the truth: our imagination, personalities, and experiences unavoidably influence the way we interact with the world. But that's not the same as saying whatever we imagine is true. I think Pi, for instance, knows which of his stories is true. It's not Pi but the reader who is left with uncertainty and who therefore has to throw her hands up and say "I don't know," or else choose one story or the other. And to me, this isn't too far off from the predicament we all find ourselves in.

[SPOILER ALERT] And that's what makes Life of Pi such a challenge to the reader: Pi's first story is fantastic, wonderful, but hard to believe. Yet there's some evidence that it happened just the way he said it did. And Pi's second story is brutal, terrible, but much easier to accept as true. Yet it's not entirely plausible either, and it leaves no room for the meerkat bones or Pi's "trusting sense of presence and ultimate purpose." If the reader personally dismisses the tiger story out of hand, I suppose that's another way of saying the reader, by nature, tends to believe the more likely but less lovely story. In the same way, if the reader gets to the story's payoff and still believes there was a tiger in the boat, the reader is probably inclined to believe the more emotionally satisfying story. But it should be born in mind that Pi doesn't definitively state which story was true, something which only he can know for sure. All we can really be sure of, in Pi's universe, is that he was stuck on a lifeboat for a while before making it to shore. [SPOILER ALERT] So which story do I believe? I struggled with that question for a long time. But after thinking about it for a couple of days, I'll end this review with the final lines from the book: "Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal Tiger."

I had already read "Life of Pi" with great admiration for the way Martel managed to combine a tender philosophy of life with the tough reality of his story. I never, though, expected that it could be illustrated in a way which reflects the pleasure I had when reading it. The drawings by Torjanac are however above praise and made a perfect marriage with the text. This is the way a good book has to be presented, it combines excellent penmanship with sensitive drawings and that all in a shape about which the publisher can be very proud. BRAVO!!

A truly satisfying and amazing novel. It is now brilliant in this Illustrated edition. I think if there is one book a person should read in their lifetime it should be this!

I would have to say that this is one of the greatest books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Yann Martel pulls you in from the beginning with his curious and cogitative way of examining human (and animal) nature in a tale you won't soon forget.

I don't know what to add about this book.
It is based on a true story,the central character is now a Canadian citizen, one fact I can add to anyone who bothers to read my reveiw.He is alive,living in the midwest,and about 5 years younger than myself.
If you love pictorial allegories,and appreciate the wizard of Oz, or Alice through the looking glass,then this is your next book to read.
I love Amy Tan, Margaret Atwood,and Arthur c. Clark, and Rawling's Harry Potter series.
This is an extroardinary book.It is not like anything I read before,including the abovementioned.
I bought my first copy of this book in a Toronto airport in 2003;I began reading it in the plane,I was headed for Madrid,and when I got there,I boarded a bus to take me through town,past juan miro and picasso and other Spanish artists' work on display in public boulevards...
It was 7 AM ,when I arrived in Madrid. I looked at the outdoor art on boulevards between reading snatches of the last chapters of this book.
I was annoyed to be told by the tour guide to observe works by Miro(may God forgive me!)and ,the guy called Bigassole.ahem.Picasso. This story kept me awake for 14 hours,and I was not tired in the least.
Maybe Barcelona is the only place that could divert my eyes off the pages of this book.
Maybe.
But it didn't work for me in 2003...I read this book,cover to cover,for about 16 hours.
I wanted to find out how this Indian teenager survived the Pacific ocean,with a tiger on board, no food or fresh water.
He did.
good thing I finished it before hitting Barcelona.
One of the best of the best books written.It's Darwin,Jung,Freud,Kahil Gibran,with a touch of Ekhart Tolle.

While this book starts out a bit slow and confusing, and seemingly pointless, it picks up shortly thereafter and then gets you hooked. You live the whole experience with Pi as if you were right there with him. The author does an amazing job with the descriptions and narratives. This is one book that you will want to read again and again.

I read Pi in 2003 and I loved it then...so much. It was one of the best book club discussions we ever had. So imagine my delight when I discovered a new, first edition in my local bookstore where Yann Martel will be visiting later this week for his new book. This new edition is just as lovely as my original Winnie the Pooh book that I received as a gift when it was originally published in 1961 and was only available at Harrods of London.

The paintings are so beautiful... beautiful beyond description. They pop up in all sorts of unexpected places at just the right moment. All of the paintings are of what young Pi might be witnessing, so we get to look through his eyes, his perspective. The story made me laugh, made me anxious all over again, made me cry with both sadness and joy (both feeling were present as Pi, a devout vegetarian kills his first fish) and made me sigh with satisfaction and relief.

This book may not be suitable for very small children, but it does look suspiciously like a children's book. I would recommend it to any child who can deal with the moral life and death issues in Harry Potter, but not to a child who is so young that Winnie would really float their boat.

One can read all over the net what the actual story is about. That's not how I like to review books. But if you like graphic novels and art and adventure, then purchase this book now! It is deeply spiritual, funny, wise and will take you on a voyage impossible to ever forget. I do wish there would have been a bit more from Mr. Martel about the artwork, but you can see the process on the Amazon.com products page. So that is satisfying enough. 5/5 stars.

A riveting tale of a boy's fight for survival when stranded at sea with minimum supplies and a Tiger for company. A well written, emotional story that never lets up. This hard cover edition is beautifully illustrated and adds to the overall experience. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.