It is very easy to write an entertaining review of a really bad book, or a bad movie. Conversely it is hard to write anything meaningful about something that is really good without sounding a tad boring. Thus I am at a strange predicament here. I’d love to rip Life of Pi apart, and make fun of it but I can’t because it’s actually good. For that reason I’m going to skip plot synopsis since you can read that on Amazon, or on the back of the book. I’m going to talk about the guts of the book, and the ideas it contains because they are rather interesting – so they may sort of counterweight the lack of cruelty and toilet humor in this post.
The style of the novel is light, modern, eloquent and quite accessible. It sort of reminds me of Cory Doctorow in the way the author tackles certain subjects but Yann Martell seems to be more focused while Doctorow sometimes starts rambling and looses focus in a sea of pop culture, gadgetry and gimmicks. Let me give you an example – the book starts with tangential discussion of the habits and adaptations Sloths. Martel goes on for about 10 to 15 pages describing these animals in painstaking detail, and with a large dose of humor. Sloth’s are not really part of the story, but they are animals which made a big impression on the main character so we get so we learn quite a bit about them in the very first chapter. This sort of very in-depth, seemingly off-topic tangent was rather characteristic of Cory Doctorow’s style. Martel however seems to be much more adept at making his tangents an integral part of the story, and disguising their nature. I believe that the similarity here is completely incidental, and superficial – and probably completely in my head. But that was the first association that popped into my head when I started reading the book.
It’s probably also worth mentioning that these few initial pages about Sloths were what cemented my decision to buy this book. If the author could ramble about these particularly un-interesting animals in such an amusing and engrossing way, I definitely needed to check out the rest of the novel.
Life of Pi is one of those stories that was designed from scratch to piss off the reviewers who like to categorize literature using easy to comprehend tags such as “drama”, “scifi”, “romance” and etc. There is really no easy way to easily categorize this book. It is part Robinson Cruzoe like survival story, part fairy tale, part religious story and finally part animal planet documentary. Martel has this amazing ability to shift between these completely different themes without you even noticing and weave them into a cohesive whole.
On top of that, the novel is chock full of interesting, thought provoking ideas. For example Martel makes a passionate defense of zoo system that made me change the way I think about these institutions. A lot of people consider consider zoo’s to be a bit cruel places where poor animals are imprisoned for our entertainment. They look at a lion in his enclosure and see a fallen king of the jungle, broken, enslaved and yearning to regain his freedom with the every fiber in his body. Martel on the other hand claims that the very same lion is absolutely happy and content to live in that enclosure simply because he never understood the abstract concept of freedom. Animals are usually very territorial and once they find a place they like, they are very reluctant to move. Out of necessity their territories in the wild end up being quite big because it is not very easy to find a spot that has both plenty of water, food, and a place to sleep. Usually these things are spatially separated, and thus every day the animal must trod around from the watering hole, to it’s favorite hunting/grazing spot and back.
Now if you take that territory, shrink it down in size you have a typical zoo enclosure. The animal has a place to sleep, a place to drink and a place to eat all within reach. On top of that, the food is plentiful, and magically appears out of nowhere every morning, the water is always clean and there are no dangerous predators in sight. Could an animal ask for a better accommodation? Freedom is an abstract concept has inherent value to us humans, but there is no reason to think that an animal would comprehend and understand it’s value – or desire it the same way we do if all it’s needs are being met.
You may or may not agree with this point of view but it is interesting angle, and it made me think. The book would be worth reading just to see this argument being presented by Martel. And trust me, he does it much better than me.
Another interesting topic tackled by the book is religion. The main character is a practicing Hindu, Christian and Muslim all at the same time. He gives all the religions equal time and mind share and considers them compatible and complimentary to each other. Each offers to him a different facet of religious experience, but only combined together they let him express his faith to the fullest. How does this work considering the fact that both Christianity and Islam are exclusive religions? I’m not even going to attempt to explain this. You will have to read the book – but Martel’s religious discussions are worth at least a cursory look. As with the zoo bit, his unique point of view makes you think, and re-evaluate your own preconceptions about religion.
Finally, there are the bizarre, loopy parts that really made an impression on me. I personally think that (note this is a spoiler) [ROT13: gur pneavibebhf vfynaq] an awesome concept. Completely unreal, original but also quite unsettling in a subtle way.
The ending is unconventional as well. It sort of killed me, but at the same time made the story more profound as it was. The way this ending implants a seed of doubt in you is insidious. It bothered me for days, until I realized it didn’t really matter what what actually happened to Pi. Important thing was that the story he told carried the messages it did – that it entertained me, amused me and made me think. So I will go ahead and agree with Pi – I like the story with animals much better, and I’m glad I read it.
[tags]life of pi, iann martel, books, review[/tags]
I read Life of Pi a while back, but reading this I have a feeling I may have been too young to “get it” at the time.
Note to self: read it again.
Never read it, never even heard of it. But after this review I’m actually consider buying it. I never buy books. I don’t even have a copy of The Guide!
@Matt` – that happened to me too with several books. It’s usually worth re-reading them later on for that “holly crap, I had no idea this is what it was about!” realization. :)
@freelancer what is “The Guide”? Oh wait… Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy perhaps? I don’t own that one either. I read it long, long time ago – borrowed it from a friend.
@Luke: Yeah, that’s the one. It happens to be my favorite book, and I’ve read it six times…
I don’t read that many books, but I’ve definitely gotten that realization from re-watching TV shows :)
Yes, it was well written, yes, the arguements were good, but it just. Didn’t. Go. Anywhere
I got through a good third of the book and NOTHING HAPPENED
Threw it across the room, had a coffee, picked up Robert Sheckleys Mindswap instead. Which was much better.
@Mack – What did you expect to happen though? I pretty much expected it to be all about kid on a boat with a tiger doing nothing. :)
And I would say that the spoiler I mentioned above counts as “something” that happened. And so does the second, much more gritty story story he told to the Japanese men.
I read it when it went out in Europe, some years ago. I loved it. I can be as picky on books as Luke is picky on films, if not more. But that book is just totally amazing. Great ideas, great story telling, great characters. And please note that it is a book written by a French speaking guy directly in English. The only thing I didn’t like as much as the rest is actually the “spoiler” Luke mentions…
Well, the spoiler didn’t bother me that much, but it does make it hard for one to buy into the whole “this is a true story” thing. Then again if you consider the “second story” then it doesn’t really matter.
In those terms you could look at it as a metaphorical sort of thing. I’m not sure what it would be though…
I picked up the book expecting Pi to have some sort of life, wherein something happens in it. It didn’t.
Well, what about the shipwreck? Or his relationship with the tiger? Or the “spoiler”? For me me these were big, life changing things to the little Pi. So it’s not like “nothing” happened to him. But maybe I’m getting to hung up on semantics here.
There was not much in this book in terms of action, dramatic suspense or unexpected plot twists – I’ll give you that. I can see how it could get boring if you had different expectations. I enjoyed it nevertheless.
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Hi Luke,
I saw on Goodreads that you read this book, giving it 5 stars and searched for your review here. I am about 15% down the book and considering stopping. I read already the part you describe here where the author defends zoo animals when compared to their wild counterparts. It is when I started to consider stopping
He finishes his point by asking the question “would you rather be put up at the Ritz with free room service and unlimited access to a doctor or be homeless without a soul to care for you?” I find the question at least unfair. First, we are humans, which means we are capable of discernment. More importantly, the question is misleading as it doesn’t go all the way in the comparison he is making. It should have been: “would you rather be put up at the Ritz with free room service and unlimited access to a doctor BUT locked in that room forever or be homeless without a soul to care for you BUT be able to roam freely anywhere you please?” I’m not sure all humans, with our ability to discern, would answer this question so easily and promptly, either way.
But to go back to animals, he oversimplifies the animal nature by saying their requirements are “the absence of parasites and enemies” and “the abundance of food”. If that’s the case, why so many species can’t be bred in captivity? Why so many die when brought in a cage? Why some need to be fed with live preys so they can still “hunt” tem? If they prefer the zoo, wouldn’t they prefer some ready-made food too? My biggest problem here is that I think the author just selectivity picks advantages of the zoo and disadvantages of the wildlife to prove a point, which is not even about zoos but religion.
Simple searches on Google Scholar reveal problems researchers investigate in zoos related to animal depression, breeding, feeding, stress in dealing with humans and other animals and in being in closed spaces, even in measuring how “happy” they are in a zoo as opposed to out in the wild. This doesn’t translates to me as zoos being a “preferable” option for the animals even though they might get used to it. And he ignores all this to be able to blame people for not having zoos in their “good graces” anymore. A “problem” also faced by religion. That is, according to him, religion is free (or almost) of problems but people are now picking on them nevertheless. He says, “certain illusions about freedom plague them both”.
This religion bias is bothering me and making me disconsider the book. It didn’t bother you?
@ Ricardo:
Well, I enjoyed his writing style and I thought he made some interesting points. But yeah, I don’t fully buy into the Zoo thing either, but at the time it made me think about the ethics of zoo keeping and the like. Which is I guess something literature is supposed to do. You may agree or disagree, but if it makes you go “Hmm… I never thought about it like that” then I think this is a good thing.
For me this beats reading a book which requires no thinking, and just goes through the motions of rehashing old tropes to the point you can see the plot twists coming like three chapters in advance. Sometimes reading something you definitely disagree with can be interesting an engaging experience in itself, because it makes you think about why you disagree with it, and explore the other side of the issue.
I mean you brought up a lot of excellent points to counter Matel’s thesis and they are all valid criticisms of this idea. Would you research these facts or even think about them otherwise? I think there is at least some value in a book that spurs you up go and do that.
But coming back to the zoo thing – you could make a similar argument about domesticating animals. I mean, dog and cat owners like to think that their pets are loved, cared for and their lives are much better and fuller than if they would be if they were wild animals. In case of some breeds this is not even a choice because they simply would not be able to survive without human care.
You could make a very valid argument that, say dog breeding that let to all these “toy” dogs that can no longer survive without us is kinda fucked up and cruel in itself. But on the other hand can you imagine a world without pets? I mean, what would we do without cat pictures on the internet?
Thanks! This is a good point about reading something you disagree with. In this case, besides, the book is entertaining even though some of the protagonist’s religious remarks seem too much like preaching to me.
I agree with you that similar arguments can be raised for pets or farm animals. But that just goes to say that the protagonist’s points are shortsighted at best. Of course this is a novel and he is not going to delve into long scientific discussions here. Still, it was for me a feeble argument for what he was trying to extrapolate it for.
I continued reading and got to the part where he is more descriptive about the religions. It is interesting. I like his syncretism, mixing up Hinduism, Catholicism and Islamism. I will give it another shot.