Chris Nicholson's Writing Weblog
December 30, 2004 • Thursday
A few days ago I finished reading the novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. My sister Katie had been urging me to read it for about a year. A few weeks ago she finally just put her copy of the book in my hand and sent me home.
I'm glad she did. I won't say it's a "must-read," but it's certainly an excellent novel. Once the story got going (which took a while), putting the book down was difficult; several nights last week I was reading until 2 or 3 a.m.
Life of Pi is the story of Pi Patel, a teenage Indian boy, son of a zookeeper, who survives the sinking of a cargo ship only to end up as the sole human passenger on a lifeboat with a zebra, orangutan, spotted hyena and 450-pound Bengal tiger. As expected, soon the only two living castaways are Pi and the cat. What’s unexpected are the proceedings of the rest of the story.
The book is more "literary" than I'd first suspected — or even than I'd suspected when I was 90 percent through reading. It's the kind of novel that leaves just enough unanswered questions to generate discussion about "what really happened," the kind of debate that reading groups and high school literature classes love to engage in.
The writing is solid, often poignant and philosophical, and at times even poetic. Additionally, Life of Pi contains what was, for me, one of the greatest prose surprises in modern fiction.
In the future, perhaps I’ll be quicker to read Katie’s recommendations. (But I’m an older brother — so probably not.)
After-note: Incidentally, the hometown of Pi Patel, the setting of Part One of the novel, is Pondicherry, India. It is a real town, located on the coast of the Bay of Bengal. Pondicherry was one of the towns hit by the tsunami on December 26.
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