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A review by ravina_b
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
2.0
Being such a popular and famous book, I was deeply disappointed by how much I disliked LIFE OF PI. In a nutshell, I found the whole thing to be tedious, inauthentic, and boring in parts. A book about a boy on a lifeboat with a tiger really shouldn’t be boring. There isn’t really much action until a third of the way through the book and I felt that those first 100 pages were filler, it could have done without them. It took me days to get through them, which is very unlike me. I hoped for better once I got to Pi’s journey through the sea but I was still struggling with it around 75% of the way in and it got to the point where I was reading for the sake of reading rather than actually enjoying it. In terms of it being inauthentic, I can’t say the reason for this as I haven’t read any of Martel’s other work. I don’t know if I just don’t like his voice, or if I felt affronted by the fact that he is a white Canadian writing about a Tamil boy. Maybe I’m just too sensitive but it didn’t sit right with me and I thought the pretence of Pi being a real person was weird in that particular context.
Some of the other things I had issues with:
• Pi’s full name is “Piscine” - i.e. French for “swimming pool” - and his brother is called Ravi. The reason for his name might have been covered (I vaguely remember an uncle teaching him how to swim) but I don’t remember, and I feel like something as random as that needs a good explanation.
• It tries too hard to be deep in parts. There’s the surface level boy-and-tiger story, then there’s the deeper level to it all which I won’t spoil. But there was a whole “who else could tell this story in 100 chapters” thing which had a (in my perspective) silly explanation of why it was important, and for me made an okay story into a subpar story. On a related note, I did wonder if the name “Piscine” and all the talk of swimming was an attempt to connect to the main stranded-at-sea story - which again was trying too hard and didn’t explain his parents’ decision to call him Piscine.
• I get that it’s a religious book and there was the “this story will make you believe in God” tagline, but I thought the disparaging narrative about atheists (they believe in God when they’re desperate on their deathbed) and agnostics (they’re so confused, the poor dears) was unnecessary. The commentary on the other religions did make me a bit uncomfortable but I’m not Christian, Hindu, or Muslim so it’s not really my place to make that call.
I don’t know, maybe I’m too dense for this book but it just wasn’t for me.
Some of the other things I had issues with:
• Pi’s full name is “Piscine” - i.e. French for “swimming pool” - and his brother is called Ravi. The reason for his name might have been covered (I vaguely remember an uncle teaching him how to swim) but I don’t remember, and I feel like something as random as that needs a good explanation.
• It tries too hard to be deep in parts. There’s the surface level boy-and-tiger story, then there’s the deeper level to it all which I won’t spoil. But there was a whole “who else could tell this story in 100 chapters” thing which had a (in my perspective) silly explanation of why it was important, and for me made an okay story into a subpar story. On a related note, I did wonder if the name “Piscine” and all the talk of swimming was an attempt to connect to the main stranded-at-sea story - which again was trying too hard and didn’t explain his parents’ decision to call him Piscine.
• I get that it’s a religious book and there was the “this story will make you believe in God” tagline, but I thought the disparaging narrative about atheists (they believe in God when they’re desperate on their deathbed) and agnostics (they’re so confused, the poor dears) was unnecessary. The commentary on the other religions did make me a bit uncomfortable but I’m not Christian, Hindu, or Muslim so it’s not really my place to make that call.
I don’t know, maybe I’m too dense for this book but it just wasn’t for me.