In spite of all the comparisons and accusations, Life of Pi is a startlingly original work, not easily slotted into any known category. Not only that -- it breaks virtually every rule of modern fiction-writing and gets away with it. It’s unabashedly religious, even a bit preachy; it has long stretches with no dialogue, even longer descriptive passages; and it can’t decide whether to be whimsical or deep, so darts back and forth between the two. There is no doubt that Martel has magic in him, for he alternately charms and shocks, seduces and repels in a way that makes his novel quite addictive.
By now most have heard that Life of Pi is in essence a story of a 16-year-old boy and a tiger forced into frightening intimacy on a lifeboat for a harrowing seven months. This is the jewel, the glittering tiger’s-eye of the novel, but Martel goes to great pains to give it the right setting.
Piscine Molitor Patel lives in Pondicherry, India in the late 1970s. He got his weird handle from a swimming pool in Paris, leading to all sorts of embarrassing school nicknames like ’’Pissing.’’ Pi can cope with this only because his spirituality is so intense. he identifies with Hindu, Muslim and Christian traditions so strongly that he attends all three churches: ’’He seems to be attracting religions the way a dog attracts fleas”.
In spite of all the careful backstory, we don’t truly begin to know Pi until the disaster at sea which forces him to spend months with a ravenous predator, Pi is the only human survivor, a reluctant Noah sharing his small lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger incongruously named Richard Parker. What keeps Pi from being eaten straight away is his deep knowledge of animal psychology. Not for nothing is he the zookeeper’s son. He knows he must somehow gain the upper hand, which he achieves through intimidation by blasting on a shrill whistle. We know from the beginning that Pi survives, but this makes his story no less compelling
All in all Life of Pi made me laugh out loud, stood my hair on end and inspired marvel, I wanted the pages to go on and on…