by Eliza GREEN

The first sec­tion of au­thor Yann Martel’s Life of Pi con­tain the nar­ra­tor’s child­hood sto­ry. Piscine Moli­tor Pa­tel tells of a boy­hood in Pondicher­ry, In­dia, spent swim­ming, liv­ing with his zookeep­ing fam­i­ly, and search­ing for and find­ing god(s) claimed by var­ied re­li­gious faiths (he ac­cepts them all). The au­thor fills nine­ty-plus pages where thir­ty would have done. I was ready to toss the book at page six­ty, but skipped ahead to con­firm that the tiger pic­tured in a lifeboat on the front cov­er with a lone hu­man com­pan­ion does make an appearance.

Dur­ing part two the book be­comes in­ter­est­ing. Pro­tag­o­nist Pi finds him­self on a life raft, cast off a sink­ing car­go ship en route to Cana­da; his fam­i­ly, and old life, oblit­er­at­ed. Pi makes ship­mates of a hye­na, an orang­utan, an in­jured ze­bra, and a tiger. So starts an un­usu­al, read­able, in­ter­est­ing plot, punc­tu­at­ed by fear, hope, death, and spir­i­tu­al strug­gle. This sec­tion of the books has read­able, el­e­gant prose, blotched too-of­ten by tru­ly hor­ri­ble pas­sages along the lines of, “the fly­ing fish jumped out of the wa­ter and in­to the boat. The fish flayed around like a fish out of wa­ter.” This is not a quote, but it is easy to find pas­sages as poor and clichéd. At first I won­dered if the au­thor was try­ing to be ironic.

The third sec­tion of the book is a short thir­ty-two pages, but like the first sec­tion it is twice as long as it should be. Res­cued from his ex­is­tence on a lifeboat with on­ly a tiger for com­pa­ny, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Japan­ese ship­ping con­cern which owned the crashed ves­sel come to Pi with ques­tions, want­i­ng an ex­pla­na­tion for the fail­ure at sea. They don’t be­lieve the fan­tas­ti­cal tale Pi spins. Pi of­fers a base and be­liev­able ac­count of hu­man pas­sen­gers and their an­i­mal be­hav­ior. Pi’s sto­ry of tigers and im­pos­si­ble is­lands is im­me­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able to the read­er as metaphor for the true, sor­did events of the Pi’s ship­wreck and sal­va­tion. In­ex­plic­a­bly, the au­thor un­der­scores the con­nec­tions, us­ing the Japan­ese in­ves­ti­ga­tors to state, “Hey, this fac­tu­al-sound­ing sto­ry is just like… .” When the in­ves­ti­ga­tors speak to each oth­er in Japan­ese, which Pi would not un­der­stand, their evo­ca­tions are print­ed in a spe­cial, wacky font. Any rea­son­able read­er could make the con­nec­tions, and the pan­der­ing ends the book on sour note.

Sec­tion One: C

Sec­tion Two: A-

Sec­tion Three: Z

Over­all: G+

Filed under Books on June 25th, 2004

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