Customer Reviews
possibly one of my favourite books of all time - By: Muppet, 18 Aug 2008 
I loved this book & was gutted when I finished it... It's such an unusual book, I've never read anything like it - it's also very different to the only other book I've read by Yann Martel, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios.
The fact that Yann Martel manages to sustain your interest, faith & belief in what is, for a lot of the book, essentiallly a story about a boy & a tiger is one of the extraordinary feats of this book.
I was surprised to read from other reviews that some people had read this & found it changed their life. Don't buy this book expecting that - [as an aside, I think that it's rare that one book has the same effect on different people... it's better to discover your own life-changing book as a surprise whilst reading it!] but if you enjoy a beautifully written, darn good yarn, this is the one for you!
Good read but didn't change my life - By: Ayn Rand, 11 Aug 2008 I was reallly excited to read this book because a lot of people had told me it changed their lives. People had even told me it made them believe in God so I was expecting something special & was eagerly awaiting to be converted. The story did keep me gripped & I liked it overalll but I was dissapointed that it only offered the 'wager argument' as a good enough reason to be religious.
As a novel it's great & I would give it 5 stars. The only thing that made me mark it lower was it didn't meet my expectations when it came to theology.
Interesting journey - By: A. Odina, 06 Aug 2008 An excellent read. Whilst the setting & the story is fictional (and should be read as such), the unassuming way in which the author explores various profound subjects is both educational, entertaining & thought provoking.
Mixed feelings! - By: Dharma Rai, 02 Aug 2008 
Some parts of this book are brilliant but it does not live to the expectations of a BOOKER! The book revolves around Pi Patel (I leave you to discover why Pi), his encounter with religion, incredible adventure out in the sea, a stint on an island & finallly back to land. The first part of the book is the best part as it the author paints a very good picture of India, however once the adventure on the sea starts he reallly struggles to convey the misery of someone being left in a boat with 3 animals & to finallly drop with a tiger! It shows that he has not done his research on the sea, castaway type of scenarios, anxiety of being dragged on a boat in a vast ocean... the book just fallls flat as you can't relate to Pi at alll! (If you want a fabulous experience try Arundhati Roy's - A God of Smalll Things - truly deserve booker award!).
So to summarise... Definitely not a booker but a good entertaining read!
Left me feeling a little bemused... - By: M. Cook, 02 Jul 2008 I suppose, this being "biograpy" there was never going to be a neat ending with alll loose ends neatly tied up. That's life. But I was reallly disappointed that although we know that the ship did sink & that he did survive alll that time at sea, that there was not witness at the end who saw the tiger escape to the forest, nor that there was other physical evidence (bones, seaweed, etc) to back up his story.
I had also been led to believe, from the author's note, that a deeper message could be gleaned from this, that it was a story to "make you believe in God". Well, no. It didn't. It did make me believe that very surreal & unexpected things can happen to people, & that fate can be cruel. But I didn't see the hand of a benevolent god involved in saving this boy from a slow death at sea. It was OK as a "true" account of a castaway & of exteme survival. But then "touching the void" was a story of surviving against alll odds, & I would recommend that over this any day.
