Saturday, August 18, 2007

REVIEW: Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Published 2003 by Harvest Books.

Click on the cover to buy. I'm an IndieBound affiliate and receive a small commission on sales.

Published in 2001 and winner of the Booker Prize, Life of Pi is a great book- a story within a story, a story about stories, the stories we tell others and the stories we tell ourselves. I picked this book up and put it down more times than I can count before I finally decided to read it, and I am so glad I did. It's about a young Indian teenager who is lost at sea, ostensibly accompanied by an orangutan, a zebra, a hyena and a Bengal tiger. The story of Pi's journey through the Pacific is told twice and the reader is left to wonder which is more accurate- but as with many "unreliable narrator" stories emotional truth trumps literal truth and the tiger may just be a metaphor for something else. Pi's final words about the tiger are haunting and the whole book is a fascinating meditation on the ever-stretching limits of human endurance.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

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