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Life of Pi (Hardcover)
by Yann Martel
| Category:
Story, Award-winning books, Ages 9-12, Children's book |
| Market price: ¥ 158.00
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¥ 148.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
A story to make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction and its human creators. |
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Author: Yann Martel
Publisher: Harvest Books
Pub. in: May, 2003
ISBN: 0156027321
Pages: 336
Measurements: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BC00118
Other information: 1st US edition
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- Awards & Credential -
The winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize, the winner of Canada's 2001 Hugh MacLennan Prize |
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- MSL Picks -
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, is an intriguing novel about Pi Patel, a young, Indian boy who endures much hardship during his experiences aboard a lifeboat, with his only companions, a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a Bengal tiger. His story is amazing and poignant, developed by Martel's vibrant description, as he pays great attention to the smallest details. It is ultimately a taxing journey of sacrifice and self-discovery.
Pi's journey starts aboard the ship, Tsimtsum, as he and his family begin their journey to Canada. The ship sinks, stranding Pi, and a several zoo animals, in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. He learns, after the other animals have died, that he and the Bengal tiger, named Richard Parker, must rely on one another in order to survive this testing ordeal. Pi's resourcefulness allows him to endure his situation, no matter how difficult it may seem. At times, the routine that Pi is forced to adopt becomes somewhat monotonous, but is in keeping with his dire situation-being stranded at sea, with an already limited and now steadily decreasing supply of food and water.
Martel spends all of part one of the novel, entitled Toronto and Pondicherry, developing Pi's character. He introduces the origins of his name, Piscine Molitor Patel, which is as diverse as his interest in religion. He is devoted to God, but wants to not only follow his family's Hindu faith, but the teachings of Christianity and Islam as well. It is part of Pi's unfaltering faith in all religions that allows him to survive 227 days at sea.
Ultimately, Yann Martel creates a thought-provoking story of a young boy with extraordinary faith in many religions and a love of all animals. During his journey, he demonstrates his fervent belief in all things. Despite the initial fear he had toward the Bengal tiger, he comes to regard Richard Parker with much respect and amity. When he must say farewell to Richard Parker, he speaks from his heart, "I would like to say it formally: Richard Parker, thank you. Thank you for saving my life...I hope you will remember me as a friend. I will never forget you, that is certain. You will always be with me, in my heart" (Martel 286). Martel's skills as a storyteller and novelist are clear throughout Life of Pi, as he creates a mature, gentle character in Pi, one who is willing to accept religions of all kinds and has an optimistic attitude toward life. He endures much sacrifice during his journey at sea, but also demonstrates much self-discovery, as he never loses faith in his beliefs.
Target readers:
Kids aged up 8
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Yann Martel, the child of diplomats, grew up in Costa Rica, France, Mexico, Alaska and Canada and as an adult has spent time in Iran, Turkey and India. After studying philosophy at Trent University, he worked at odd jobs until he began making a living as a writer at the age of 27. He lives in Montreal.
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The son of a zookeeper, Pi Patel has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and a fervent love of stories. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes.
The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional-but is it truer?
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CHAPTER 1
My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
Academic study and the steady, mindful practice of religion slowly brought me back to life. I have remained a faithful Hindu, Christian and Muslim. I decided to stay in Toronto. After one year of high school, I attended the University of Toronto and took a double-major Bachelor's degree. My majors were religious studies and zoology. My fourth-year thesis for religious studies concerned certain aspects of the cosmogony theory of Isaac Luria, the great sixteenth-century Kabbalist from Safe. My zoology thesis was a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanor-calm, quiet and introspective-did something to soothe my shattered self.
There are two-toed sloths and there are three-toed sloths, the case being determined by the forepaws of the animals, since all sloths have three claws on their hind paws. I had the great luck one summer of studying the three-toed sloth in situ in the equatorial jungles of Brazil. It is a highly intriguing creature. Its only real habit is indolence. It sleeps or rests on average twenty hours a day. Our team tested the sleep habits of five wild three-toed sloths by placing on their heads, in the early evening after they had fallen asleep, bright red plastic dishes filled with water. We found them still in place late the next morning, the water of the dishes swarming with insects. The sloth is at its busiest at sunset, using the word busy here in a most relaxed sense. It moves along the bough of a tree in its characteristic upside-down position at the speed of roughly 400 metres an hour. On the ground, it crawls to its next tree at the rate of 250 metres an hour, when motivated, which is 440 times slower than a motivated cheetah. Unmotivated, it covers four to five metres in an hour.
The three-toed sloth is not well informed about the outside world. On a scale of 2 to 10, where 2 represents unusual dullness and 10 extreme acuity, Beebe (1926) gave the sloth's senses of taste, touch, sight and hearing a rating of 2, and its sense of smell a rating of 3. If you come upon a sleeping three-toed sloth in the wild, two or three nudges should suffice to awaken it; it will then look sleepily in every direction but yours. Why it should look about is uncertain since the sloth sees everything in a Magoo-like blur. As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound. Beebe reported that firing guns next to sleeping or feeding sloths elicited little reaction. And the sloth's slightly better sense of smell should not be overestimated. They are said to be able to sniff and avoid decayed branches, but Bullock (1968) reported that sloths fall to the ground clinging to decayed branches "often".
How does it survive, you might ask.
Precisely by being so slow. Sleepiness and slothfulness keep it out of harm's way, away from the notice of jaguars, ocelots, harpy eagles and anacondas. A sloth's hairs shelter an algae that is brown during the dry season and green during the wet season, so the animal blends in with the surrounding moss and foliage and looks like a nest of white ants or of squirrels, or like nothing at all but part of a tree.
The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. "A good-natured smile is forever on its lips," reported Tirler (1966). I have seen that smile with my own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions onto animals, but many a time during that month in Brazil, looking up at sloths in repose, I felt I was in the presence of upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of my scientific probing.
Sometimes I got my majors mixed up. A number of my fellow religious-studies students-muddled agnostics who didn't know which way was up, in the thrall of reason, that fool's gold for the bright-reminded me of the three-toed sloth; and the three-toed sloth, such a beautiful example of the miracle of life, reminded me of God.
I never had problems with my fellow scientists. Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science.
I was a very good student, if I may say so myself. I was tops at St. Michael's College four years in a row. I got every possible student award from the Department of Zoology. If I got none from the Department of Religious Studies, it is simply because there are no student awards in this department (the rewards of religious study are not in mortal hands, we all know that). I would have received the Governor General's Academic Medal, the University of Toronto's highest undergraduate award, of which no small number of illustrious Canadians have been recipients, were it not for a beef-eating pink boy with a neck like a tree trunk and a temperament of unbearable good cheer.
I still smart a little at the slight. When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling. My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition. I mock this skull. I look at it and I say, "You've got the wrong fellow. You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. Move on!" The skull snickers and moves ever closer, but that doesn't surprise me. The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity-it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud. The pink boy also got the nod from the Rhodes scholarship committee. I love him and I hope his time at Oxford was a rich experience. If Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, one day favors me bountifully, Oxford is fifth on the list of cities I would like to visit before I pass on, after Mecca, Varanasi, Jerusalem and Paris.
I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful.
I love Canada. I miss the heat of India, the food, the house lizards on the walls, the musicals on the silver screen, the cows wandering the streets, the crows cawing, even the talk of cricket matches, but I love Canada. It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos. Anyway, I have nothing to go home to in Pondicherry.
Richard Parker has stayed with me. I've never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. That pain is like an axe that chops at my heart.
The doctors and nurses at the hospital in Mexico were incredibly kind to me. And the patients, too. Victims of cancer or car accidents, once they heard my story, they hobbled and wheeled over to see me, they and their families, though none of them spoke English and I spoke no Spanish. They smiled at me, shook my hand, patted me on the head, and left gifts of food and clothing on my bed. They moved me to uncontrollable fits of laughing and crying.
Within a couple of days I could stand, even make two, three steps, despite nausea, dizziness and general weakness. Blood tests revealed that I was anemic and that my level of sodium was very high and my potassium low. My body retained fluids and my legs swelled up tremendously. I looked as if I had been grafted with a pair of elephant legs. My urine was a deep, dark yellow going on to brown. After a week or so, I could walk just about normally and I could wear shoes if I didn't lace them up. My skin healed, though I still have scars on my shoulders and back.
The first time I turned a tap on, its noisy, wasteful, superabundant gush was such a shock that I became incoherent and my legs collapsed beneath me and I fainted in the arms of a nurse.
The first time I went to an Indian restaurant in Canada I used my fingers. The waiter looked at me critically and said, "Fresh off the boat, are you?" I blanched. My fingers, which a second before had been taste buds savoring the food a little ahead of my mouth, became dirty under his gaze. They froze like criminals caught in the act. I didn't dare lick them. I wiped them guiltily on my napkin. He had no idea how deeply those words wounded me. They were like nails being driven into my flesh. I picked up the knife and fork. I had hardly ever used such instruments. My hands trembled. My sambar lost its taste.
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Publisher's Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
"A fabulous romp through an imagination by turns ecstatic, cunning, despairing and resilient, this novel is an impressive achievement - "a story that will make you believe in God," as one character says.... This richly patterned work, Martel's second novel, won Canada's 2001 Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. In it, Martel displays the clever voice and tremendous storytelling skills of an emerging master.
FYI: Booksellers would be wise to advise readers to browse through Martel's introductory note. His captivating honesty about the genesis of his story is almost worth the price of the book itself."
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The Hamilton Spectator (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
"I guarantee that you will not be able to put this book down. It is a realistic, gripping story of survival at sea. On one level, the book is a suspenseful adventure story, a demonstration of how extreme need alters a man's character…. On another level, this is a profound meditation on the role of religion in human life and the nature of animals, wild and human. His language…is vivid and striking. His imagination if powerful, his range enormous, his capacity for persuasion almost limitless. I predict that Yann Martel will develop into one of Canada's great writers." |
B. Merritt (MSL quote), California United States
<2007-01-04 00:00>
For me, the best books are those that leave much up to the interpretation of their readers. Authors have difficulty pulling this off, mainly because publishers (at least I believe it's the publishers and/or editors at these houses) enjoy stories that spell out every last detail, leaving nothing to the imaginations of the reading population. Sometimes-rarely-a book comes along that is not only told well, with memorable characters and a compelling story, but it also allows debate once you've finished it. Such is The Life of Pi.
Yann Martel (author) gives us this gem that starts out slow and picks up speed until the very end, where the debate as to "what really happened to Pi" begins.
We're introduced to the narrator, Piscine Molitor Patel, in his hometown of Pondicherry, India. Surrounded by animals at this father's zoo, we learn the creatures that inhabit this place are an integral part of Pi. Also integral to Pi's life is his belief in God, but Pi "attracts religions like a dog attracts fleas" and he finds himself a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu on the same day (much to the dismay of his parents). It is his faith in God that will help pull Pi through the most trying event in his life: surviving on a lifeboat for 227 days. But I'm jumping ahead.
The book is part and parcel told by a writer who's trying to get Pi's story out of him but having great difficulty. This unknown author visits Pi at his home in Canada where our story begins and ends. Pi's life is one of rarity and hardship overcome by internal strength. And it is this story that underlies the telling of Pi's young life.
When Pi's father decides to sell the zoo and transport his family across the sea to Canada (in search of a better life), the boat they are on sinks. Pi is the only survivor. Strike that. Pi is the only human survivor. When he plops into a lifeboat, he quickly discovers that he has an orangutan, a zebra, a hyena, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker accompanying him. As animal nature would have it, though, the lifeboats occupants are quickly whittled down to Richard Parker and Pi (it's noteworthy to mention this isn't some anthropomorphic cartoon story where animals talk and are friendly to humans). Having been closely associated with animals in his father's zoo, Pi takes on the challenge of training Richard Parker, teaching the man-eater which side of the boat is his and which is Pi's. An understanding develops and the tiger and boy live together on the boat for months and months, surviving each other as much as famine, thirst, sharks, and storms.
Once the boat lands (in Mexico), Richard Parker summarily takes off and is never heard from again. Pi is rescued by beachcombers and sent to a hospital. Here he meets up with two Japanese officials, employees of the company that own the sunken ship. Questions arise and disbelief is confronted. How could a boy survive on a lifeboat with a carnivorous tiger for over seven months? The Japanese men ask for another story, one that "doesn't involve animals" and it is here that readers have to make up their own minds. Did it happen the way Pi said it did the first time? Or is this ending version the true story? I'm not going to give away what this is; suffice to say it is compelling and intriguing and will probably blow your mind.
This novel certainly ranks up there with my favorite reads in the past few years. I'm sure I'll read it again ...and again ...and again, just to see which story of Pi's I truly believe.
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Lynne P. Caldwell (MSL quote), Dadeville, AL USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
I read this entire book thinking that this was the actual autobiography of Pi! In other words, I thought this was a true story! Some of you are probably thinking that this reviewer is not the sharpest knife in the drawer but who on earth could make something like this up? Think about it.....this story is so illogical that it has to be true. The attention to detail that the author, Yann Martel inserts into this novel is unbelievable. I guess this is why some people are brilliant authors and some of us are just readers! I read this book as entertainment..... I rarely look for metaphors or allegories or hidden meanings; I did that in high school and college. But occasionally, someone will write something that is so gripping; it is all you can think about. If I had reviewed the LIFE OF PI immediately after reading it, I probably would have given it 4 stars. But now, months later, I keep picking up the story and thumbing through it, thinking about it, savoring it. So, I figured this is a Five Star book.
Pi is a young Indian boy who, much to his parent's chagrin, is not quite sure what religion he wants to be; so, he practices his native Hindu, Christianity and Islam as well. It is quite comical reading about his devotion to these religions; it's as if he wants to have all his bases covered. Another thing Pi is passionate about is his father's zoo. He spends his free time with the animals and tries to learn everything he can, both through observation and by his father's numerous lectures. This education will serve him well when he starts on his long journey in the small lifeboat.
Pi and his family board a ship for immigration to Canada. While at sea, the ship sinks, killing all on board with the exception of Pi. He survives by jumping into a lifeboat with a hyena, and is joined by a Zebra with a broken leg, a fierce Bengal tiger and an orangutan. Eventually only the tiger (Richard Parker) and the boy survive. Months at sea are spent trying to stay out of the tiger's way, finding food, water, cleaning animal excrement and trying to stay dry. He even tries to tame this animal. There were also storms to contend with. It was absolutely fascinating to read this account of the day-to-day, hour by hour (sometimes), activities on the high sea. This is quite a brilliant and compelling novel and I'm not being trite when I say I couldn't put it down. People have compared Martel to Margaret Atwood and I agree that this is a fair and complimentary assessment.
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