Customer Reviews
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.
One of my top 10 reads - By: Trygve Jensen, 02 Jun 2008 
I will keep this short.But let me first start off with:If this was shortlisted for the booker price,what book won?I have a feeling this may be the movie 2001 of books since I cannot see a book in the same year being better.It's such an engrossing tale with wonderful insights & written with imagination to spare.The end is almost the best thing about the book,and reallly ambiguous.You owe it to yourself to read this book.
A lasting impact - By: June Wentland, author of Nana (Computer Genius), 30 May 2008 
Some books are enjoyable to read at the time but fade fast. I read this book a couple of years ago & felt I wanted to write a review, as for me it's one of the most memorable books I've read in the last two years. It's refreshingly original & kept me thinking for a long time afterwards.
beautiful - By: L. Dorward, 26 May 2008 When discussing this book with friends & family I have come to the conclusion that it is a marmite book, you either love it or hate it. From the first page I could not put this book down. It is written in an original & beautiful way. I have read some reviews about it on here saying the book is too long & that the fantasy parts are overblown. These I believe are some of the best parts of the book. The story of the tiger & the boy is thwart with masulinity & the fragility of childhood, knowing you are an orphan, & the power of strength over adversity. I also love the touchingness of the love between the mother & her child & a love so strong she sacrificed herself. I wish Martell would pen another classic, but seeing him on the book show, years after life of Pi his new novel still has as yet arrived.
Try this book & read it with an open mind if you do manage to finish it, ( I dont understand how you cant, I read it in an afternoon ) the ending is worth reading, it leaves you for quite a while afterwards feeling touched by it
Sly and almost brilliant - By: K. Chase-Rahman, 28 Apr 2008 This is certainly one of the best books of recent years. The basic concept is brave, intelligent & original, so much so that there is little else that comes close to it. It is let down by prose which is never quite "Booker Class" & sometimes is a bit patchy. Also, apart from the basic concept of the book, some of the other aspects of the story telling, & the philosophical points are, in comparison, a little basic.
At this point I will digress from reviewing the book to warning you not to believe what Martel says in support of zoos. Zoos are not good, they are simply a lesser evil than the persecution of wild animals by greedy humans. But this warning about an implausible argument brings me back to what is so good about this book. This is an adventure story whose elements range from credible to almost implausible - & this is a blindingly simple alllegory for religious belief. Rather conveniently the reviews of this book on Amazon.co.uk are a perfect illustration of the fact that some people believe (to varying degrees) in the implausible & others simply do not. There is nothing that happens in the story that makes you go "Wow - so there is a God after alll!". Rather, the fact that you have read & "believed" a story that verges on implausible is proof that you believe in God - because God is the most implausible concept known to humans.
But what do you need to believe in God? I will explain how this story addresses that question. You know at the begining of the story that it has a happy ending - & so it is with a life of religious belief (i.e. you go to heaven). There are hard facts at the beginnig of the story & there are hard facts at the end - & so it is with a life that starts with a birth certificate & ends with a death certificate. But what do we make of the things that happen outside those hard facts? Do we reallly believe (and to what degree) what Pi says about what happened in between those hard facts? Those of us who want to believe (to varying degrees) in things that are beyond hard facts do actuallly (already) believe (to varying degrees) in God, whether we know it or not. And if you don't already know it, then when you finish this book you will find out where you stand & to what degree you believe in God.
