Read: Life of Pi - cute Engrish
Engrish and of course very verspoiler. In Life of Pi one can really spoiler if you read the conclusion first. Consistent as I was, I've done exactly that. But ... On to the review.
Do not read, if you want to read this book. I am seriously telling you, reading my review will totally spoil it for you.
I can not remember when I last not enjoyed a book as much as I did not enjoy 'Life of Pi'. I lay awake last night and pondered about why exactly it was, that I didn't like it. There isn't a just single reason, over my breakfast cup of Earl Grey and milk I came up with six or seven before I stopped thinking about it to call my future boss [tm].
First things first. I'll go in this order: the good things, the way of the book, the bad things.
The good things: The book is extremely well written and I have yet to see such a clever set-up for a story again. Yann Martel really does know about words and he knows storytelling. He was awarded the Man Booker Prize for it, which really is an well earned achievement. On the back cover one of the critics is stated 'Life of Pi is black magic and reality, a subtle and sophisticated fable about belief in its many guises.' and I must agree on the believing-part. Life of Pi is not about a shipwreck but about how large a part of us the believe can be. I totally disagree on the magic and more so on the subtle. There is no subtlety about Pi and that is what really ticked me of about it. But there is reality and believe and of both a lot more than I ever will see in the daily news.
The way of the book: is to show us all the included parts of the main story first. Which are: one lone person, his believes, his background. Then the parts are put to the test in the real story. The believes of Pi as his background are sculpted very early by his name, the animals in his fathers zoo and the sometimes downright horrific deductions about animals that he came to, the religions that he came across and sought out to know. Very early in the book we learn that Pi, the grown up, has no religion in particular that he wishes to follow but seems to have filled his house with artefacts that represent all of them and seems to be at peace and an understanding level with all of them. This was the moment when I realised that this book is about believes. I liked the idea very much, but dreaded the story afterwards as much. I was so right in the dreading part. The stories introductory pages end on 124, the dread starts right after that. Neatly separated by a white page with a little tiger printed in the middle right under the title 'The pacific ocean' This part of books ends at 385. In between is the bad part, 261 pages of it.
The bad things: from page 116 (mind you, still early in this book) I would have known who Richard Parker is. I only would have because I already spoiled myself asking my sister wtf it was all about.
From the middle part it is about survival. About the most basic and painful survival. Described in many many many words and ways telling the same things over and over. I found myself scanning the lines more than reading them. I once during nightshift in the hospital had to wait for an operation set for around midnight. It was around ten, laying down didn't make sense so I stayed up and watched a neatly filmed documentary about whalers that got into a storm and were blown of all around south America to the pacific that was not known to them.
One of them kept a diary and Life of Pi reminded me of the parts that were read out during the documentary. After they lost their ship a group of the men stayed on a tropical island with a fresh water pool and were never heard of again. A little group including the writer took the remaining sideship to sail home hopefully. After a very long time they went mad one after another and they had to decide who to kill so that they could survive. They drew straws. They then had to draw straws to decide who had to kill that person. They then had to get over themselves to actually eat. They were rescued near the coast of Mexico just like Pi. The rescuers described them as totally mad gnawing on the bones of the dead man staring about with empty eyes. None of them even so much as thought about killing another. All of them (four survivors I think) recovered with time and care but could not remember anything about their journey even when the diary was read to them.
In Life of Pi the 'bad' Person that starts the whole thing is represented by a hyena. He starts hurting, killing and acting quite mad right of the bat. I was really astonished by that. Maybe he has been mad from the start. Anything else doesn't make sense to me after remembering how mad the whalers had to get to kill one man (and they did it in a very decent and painless manner).
The real fight for survival starts long after the other inhabitants of the lifeboat have died - in a rather gory manner. The book doesn't cut the time down, the whole 227 days, little Pi and huge Richard Parker spent on this boat stretch ahead and ahead and ahead. And that is the really bad part of the book. We surely got the picture on page 200, still on page 300 we linger on and on with the almost dead Pi.
Here a thing about Pi. He is very carefully made human and person in the beginning. The happy ending is also to be found there. Only it didn't interest me at that point of the story. Pis being human and his being humanly happy would have done a wonderful job for me somewhere at the end (where for an old-fashioned lady as myself a happy ending should be). So I found myself not caring whether he died or lived. Especially during the last hundred pages. And his wife and kids came in as something I found less believable than Richard Parker. They seemed like stand in actors to make Pi more human and the fact that the narrator didn't know that Pi is married with two kids made me go 'Huh? Kids 'n wife that don't leave stuff around in a house? Yet to be seen wonders.'
Conclusion: I really liked the idea of a symbol for believe. The cover of the book shows it to us. Little curled up Pi that doesn't hope anymore and huge ready to fight looking ahead Richard Parker, surviving for both of them. I really liked the interview at the end although I thought it was a little abrupt to just go ahead and tell a different story. I liked the comparison of religions because it was without preferring one over the others.
I truly disliked the whole 261 pages of survival on that boat and I didn't find the hyena believable. I really disliked the authors notion to just rant along any idea he liked and found suitable for this book. It probably is fine this way but could really do with a hundred pages less.
Read this book if you have patience and won't get thrown off so easily by gory details of killing, dying, surviving. Don't read it, if you just decided not to like that kind of thing.
And concerning my boss. Still same old same old. I have that job (50% of it) He wants me full time, cannot give to me on paper, I wait for written word and anticipate everything else. Getting to be quite the expert on waiting. I sure hope, that this skill will come in handy someday.
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