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Book Review of Life of Pi

Life of Pi
Life of Pi
Author: Yann Martel
Genre: Literature & Fiction
Book Type: Paperback
havan avatar reviewed on + 138 more book reviews


I'm devastated. I read this book in a single day. I was hooked by the story and loved the childlike wonder of the way Pi looked at the world prior to the ship sinking. And then with the ordeal that followed the book became something more. I was completely sold but started to lose my conviction when Richard Parker goes blind. The encounters that followed that point started to sour me on the story and then in the last 30 pages, even that was explained and to some degree explained.

What I thought was becoming a modern era Jonathan Livingston Seagull went in another direction entirely. I'm an adult and I can appreciate this book for the masterwork that it is but there's a part of me that wishes I'd never read the third part of the story. I could happily chalk the 2nd lifeboat and the island up to delusions.

And isn't that peace of mind part of what religion offers? In my last review I complained that the work I was reviewing didn't have a good finish. That there weren't questions raised that I'd need to ponder for days, weeks and years afterwards. No chance of that here. This book will give me food for thought for a long long time.