Customer Reviews
Mixed thoughts - By: Holly, 12 Oct 2008 
Well, it certainly didn't make me believe in God, though I wasn't expecting it to.
Life of Pi was a reasonably interesting, if at times slow & tiresome read about the sinking of a ship which leaves a handful of survivors left to share one lifeboat.
Only one of those survivors is human; he must contend first with the savagery of a hyena that threatens to devour everything, & then with the constant danger of a Bengal Tiger that he must either tame or be eaten by.
Pi does alll that & more - he manages to keep himself & the tiger alive by using the lifeboat's rations & fishing (often with extremely gory & unnecessary details given on what Pi eats & how he kills things), rain catching, a lot of patience, & bumping into a floating island of sweet, edible algae that turns out to be a rather horrifying carnivorus mass.
Sounds implausable? Well, yes, it is. But it's fiction, so we don't have to let it worry us too much. However, the theme of the book with regards to Pi's experiences & the many chapters spent on religion in the beginning seem to be leading up to one question: "Even if you can't see it, & it seems impossible, isn't it alll right to believe in it if it makes a nice story?"
Well...no. Not reallly, not for this reader. Because that would mean disregarding logic & reasoning, & if we alll did that then we'd never move on & discover new things & ask far more interesting questions, such as "Where do we come from?" & "How did the universe come into existance?".
I am not anti-religious; I simply believe that everyone's entitiled to question popularly held, unproven & occasionallly unlikely beliefs. Where would we be if we took Pi's advice to keep blind faith in interesting stories? Still in the iron age, probably.
If you can ignore the patronising conclusion, the story on its own is alll right to pass a few days with, but certainly not exciting enough to explain the hype. Pi is a rather flat & uninteresting character that you'll likely have forgotten by the time you're nose-deep into your next read, though for some the majestic tiger Richard Parker may linger a little longer. He was the one I was rooting for.
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!
