Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Read for: Leisure
Rating: 5+

I've been delaying writing about this because the ending of the book absolutely blew me away, and I've been trying to wrap my mind around it ever since. My best attempt at an analogy is to compare it to an episode of LOST: You've been watching the whole show (reading the whole book) and you think that you have it all figured out and know what is going on, then in the last 5 minutes (or five pages) EVERYTHING changes which makes you question everything that happened before, and you are left not knowing what to believe.

So, way before the last chapter bamboozled me, I was in total awe of the quality of writing. The style is ... amazing. I wanted to underline every sentence. On the page of "Praise for Life of Pi" there is an excerpt from The Seattle Times that says "each chapter is a well-polished pearl." I think it is more apt to say that every sentence is a well-polished pearl. Every word choice is a well-polished pearl. Martel is the master of the metaphor. Each one that he gives is so vivid with imagery and yet so grounded and applicable to the situation being described. For example, during the storm that sank Pi's ship:

"Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited" (p. 128).

Or, when Pi is enchanted by listening to a man recite the Qur'an in Arabic:

"The guttural eruptions and long flowing vowels rolled just beneath my comprehension like a beautiful brook. I gazed into this brook for long spells of time. It was not wide, just one man's voice, but it was as deep as the universe" (p. 78).

I feel that there is not much I can say about Life of Pi that would do it justice. I would absolutely love to teach this book; it is probably at the senior level. There is so much heart, so much feeling, and so much to discuss. I feel that every student would have their own interpretation of the ending. Even now, looking back through the pages I've found passages that I underlined for the sheer beauty of the words, but seeing the words through the lens of the last chapter drastically changes my interpretation of those words. They are still beautiful and deep, but now even more poignant.

The best I can do is say that this a book that everyone should read.