Life of Pi
By Yann Martel
4 stars
"It is important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go."
I have started this book multiple times and for some reason I had never been able to finish it until now. I ended up having mixed feelings about this book, on one part I understand why this book won the Booker price and so many more, it is a great exploration of survival, desperation and grief. On the other hand I also understand why some people don’t like this book, it is very long, it is almost 400 pages of a boy at sea and the writing style is sometimes hard to get through.
Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure following Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, who explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
Although some parts of this book make no sense I still very much enjoyed my read. Life of Pi is magical realism adventure that explores faith, family, desperation and survival. The author managed to perfectly portrayed what was going on in the main character’s head throughout the whole experience, you could feel the desperation Pi was feeling and although some parts were nonsensical it was still a very powerful read.
Talking about the characters is easy, there was only one. Sure you get a glimpse of the other characters but 99% of the book is focused on Pi and his journey. The first thing I liked about Pi is his faith, I love how he explores multiple religions and that for him religions didn’t have to fight one another to co-exist. I really enjoy the main character, I loved how he thought and it was very raw to see him trying to survive. The whole point of the book is to be inside Pi´s head while he tries to survive 227 days at sea and I think the author did an amazing job in trying to get us to empathize with Pi. Although by the end I didn’t understand what really happened I also really enjoyed Richard Parker´s character.
Like I mentioned before the writing style is complex and for me it was 50/50. On one side I loved the writing style, it gives us enough details to fully understand what is happening and it allows us to feel desperation alongside Pi, the author did a great job in forcing us to fully live the story. On the other hand, the writing style was a bit overdone for me, I understand the purpose of using such embellished language but it came to a point where it was too much, in my opinion if the author wanted to use such complex and lyrical writing the book should have been shorter.
Finally, talking about the plot, the plot is both exhilarating and slow. You get absolutely all the details of Pi´s journey, from what he was feeling to what he was doing in order to survive. For me the best part of the book was the journey, the being stranded at sea, the surviving. The beginning of the book was good and it served as background information as to what Pi was like. My real problem was with the ending, I think the last chapter could have been excluded, I hated that the author introduced this whole new way of looking at things and then it was over.
Overall, I am glad I finally finished this book, even though it didn’t became one of my new favorite books I will still be thinking about it for a long time. Life of Pi was sad, hopeful and honestly such a rollercoaster I am happy I read it.
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