reviewed by The "EX" Patriot

“This novel was born as I was hungry,” says the opening line of Yann Martel’s the Life of Pi. And, indeed, this is a novel about hunger. Hunger found in the stomach of its main character, Pi Patel who is stranded in a life boat after the ship he was travelling upon sinks into the Pacific; and hunger in the form of the Bengal Tiger that is trapped with him. It is about spiritual hunger as Pi’s zest for life and religion leads him to become a practicing Muslim, Hindu, and Christian. And it is about the hunger for stories.

Like the fictional author of the book, the adult Pi, too, hungers for stories. The house in Canada from where he relates the details of his boyhood adventure is filled with religious symbols and trinkets so that one gets the sense that it is a home brimming with tales ready to be told. But to paraphrase what Pi says of the Christian religion, this novel has but one story. All the stories coming before it are merely a prologue. And this one story only takes on its complete horrifying, yet life-affirming and spiritual eloquence in the final few pages, long after the reader feels the tale has reached its conclusion.

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Life of Piis its readability, its capacity to capture the reader from the outset and hold on page after page until the end. It is so rare that novels that have garnered the critical praise that the Life of Pi has received are as easy to read as a Stephen King yarn. But Martel has accomplished just that. His prose lures the reader into Pi’s story with the ease of a skilled fisherman, and tightens the line at just the right time so that it is impossible to let go. The reader has no choice but to give in to the struggle and be led through the exquisite pain of Pi’s ordeal willingly, craving for more, but not wishing to reach the end.

Martel achieves this accomplishment through two very clever devices. He creates a character that is impossible not to love, and weaves the subtle details, that make the story believable, subtly into the context of the plot.

From the opening descriptions of Pi’s academic studies in Religion and Zoology, and his strange attachment for Richard Parker whom he seems to miss greatly, through his adventures at his family’s zoo in India, to the stark, minimal existence of his days aboard a life boat, Pi is an immeasurably loveable character. We feel for him when he breaks his vegetarian existence, and share his horror upon discovering that what appears to be his salvation is actually a danger more voracious than the perils of the sea. He is such a gentle, loving person that when we approach the end of the novel we honestly don’t believe this young, pacifistic young man is capable of committing even the slightest atrocity.

Martel also pulls us in with the details of his characters, so finely integrated into the story that the has no hesitation to believe it is possible for young Pi to survive aboard the lifeboat with Richard Parker, the Bengal Tiger. Even the name Richard Parker conjures up familiar images of Poe’s character and the alleged real life cabin boy who was devoured by his crew mates. Pi’s understanding of and compassion for animals stems from his upbringing. His knowledge of the details of lion training, their habits in the wild, and their biology come to him so naturally that we accept them at face value.

Martel knows that stories of man against the sea have existed since the dawn of civilisation, from ancient myth down through the years until the such products as the hit Tom Hanks film a few years back. We have a strange Oedipus complex with the ocean. It gave us birth and we are attached to it, yet we are continually aware of its temper and ability to deliver harsh punishments upon us. It is the ultimate metaphor for nearly anything an author wishes, forever constant and immortal, yet in a perpetual state of change. And Martel uses this natural metaphor to its full effect.

But despite Life of Pi’s façade as a novel of high adventure at sea, it is ultimately a profoundly psychological novel. It is at once a modern Robinson Crusoe and a contemporary Heart of Darkness. Through Pi’s story we are brought into the belly of the whale with the depths of its darkness, and back out again into the light. This is a novel that makes us profoundly aware of the beast that lives within us all.

Life of Pi
by Yann Martel
Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize
Hardcover: 336 pages
Dimensions (in inches): 1.10 x 9.30 x 6.38
Publisher: Harcourt