Life of Pi

Martel, Yann

3.94

1,622,385 ratings by Goodreads

ISBN 10: 1611748755 ISBN 13: 9781611748758

Publisher: HighBridge Audio, 2012

Martel's novel tells the story of Pi—short for Piscine—an unusual boy raised in a zoo in India. Pi's father decides to move the family to live in Canada and sell the animals to the great zoos of America. The ship taking them across the Pacific sinks and Pi finds himself the sole human survivor on a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra with a broken leg and Bengal tiger called Richard Parker. Life of Pi brings together many themes including religion, zoology, fear, and sheer tenacity. This is a funny, wise, and highly original look at what it means to be human.

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Review:

Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker ("His head was the size and color of the lifebuoy, with teeth"). It sounds like a colorful setup, but these wild beasts don't burst into song as if co-starring in an anthropomorphized Disney feature. After much gore and infighting, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive: "It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion."

An award winner in Canada, Life of Pi, Yann Martel's second novel, should prove to be a breakout book in the U.S. At one point in his journey, Pi recounts, "My greatest wish--other than salvation--was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One that I could read again and again, with new eyes and fresh understanding each time." It's safe to say that the fabulous, fablelike Life of Pi is such a book. --Brad Thomas Parsons

From the Back Cover:

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
MORE THAN SEVEN MILLION COPIES SOLD

New York Times Bestseller * Los Angeles Times Bestseller * Washington Post Bestseller * San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller * Chicago Tribune Bestseller

"A story to make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction." Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Nothing short of miraculous. It's an adventure tale so filled with love for the animal kingdom that it ought to roar." Denver Post

"Although the book reverberates with echoes from sources as disparate at Robinson Crusoe and Aesop's fables, the work it most strongly recalls is Ernest Hemingway's own foray into existentialist parable, The Old Man and the Sea." The New York Times Book Review

"A fantastical tale." USA Today

"A real adventure: brutal, tender, expressive, dramatic, and disarmingly funny." San Francisco Chronicle

"Readers familiar with Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje and Carol Shields should learn to make room on the map of contemporary Canadian fiction for the formidable Yann Martel." Chicago Tribune

"Fantastic in nearly every sense of the word, Life of Pi is a gripping adventure story, a parable about the place of human beings in the universe and a tantalizing work of metafiction . . . Laced with wit, spiced with terror, it's a book by an extraordinary talent." San Jose Mercury News

"If this century produces a classic work of survival literature, Martel is surely a contender." The Nation

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