I didn’t read Yann Martel’s Man Booker Award-winning book Life of Pi, published in 2001, for a long time. I don’t like to read books that are trendy. To be honest, I still don’t understand why I read it now, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Just because it was so popular, I expected it to be a dreadful book. In some chapters, I thought about skipping the next ten pages, but I managed to finally finish it without skipping any pages. As I said, this book by Yann Martel was lovely, although sometimes it bored me to death.
The story is quite lovely; it hooks you right from the beginning. But I think it’s way too long. Details are essential, yes, but it feels like this whole book is a detail. This is the first time I’ve read Yann Martel and I guess it would be the last as well.
It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.
Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Still, I’d say it’s a pretty different book to read. After all, I didn’t hate the book. I was bored, yes, but there were parts I enjoyed reading. I even learned what I could do if I stayed with a huge Bengal tiger on my own in the middle of the sea. For some reason, I realised that I was only focusing on what to do to survive. I felt very result-oriented.
And of course, there is the movie and the director is Ang Lee. If you are not going to read the book, I’m sure you’ll enjoy the film.
About the book: Life of Pi
The son of a zookeeper, Pi Patel has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behaviour and a fervent love of stories. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger.
Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them “the truth.” After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional–but is it truer?
About the author: Yann Martel
Yann Martel is a Spanish-born Canadian author best known for the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi, a #1 international bestseller published in more than 50 territories.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
