Book Review: The Life Of Pi by Yann Martel (48 in 2012? #38)

          The Life of Pi is really the tale of two stories.  One is incredibly interesting, compelling and thought provoking, while the other is amazingly boring, repetitive and mind dulling.  The novel starts out as a wonderful story about a young Indian boy whose parents own a zoo.  It’s a great study of faith and organized religion that presents solid arguments for the importance of zoos and religious tolerance.  And then the boat sinks and the story comes to a screeching halt; it goes from a fresh tale of faith to a new version of The Old Man and The Sea (that isn’t a complement by the way.  I’m not a Hemingway fan and The Old Man and The Sea is his most boring novel by far).  Thankfully the novel returns once again to the interesting story once the boy finally lands on shore and leaves us with a compelling question of what is real and what role truth plays in our faith.
            The novel begins with a bold declaration that this story will make you believe in God.  I’m not sure why the author builds such high expectations for himself, expectations that no one could live up to.  I understand that meant to be a commentary on truth and faith, but the story still falls far short of making anyone believe in God.  Yes, the boy lives.  Yes, it is unclear what exactly happened on the lifeboat.  Yes, I understand that the point is it doesn’t matter what happened on the boat just that the boy lived, but that doesn’t bring me any closer to the concept of God.  By building such high expectations, Yann Martel, the stories author, just makes the ambiguous ending all that more disappointing.
            For a book that has received such high acclaim, I was surprised at how much it fell flat for me.  As much as I loved the first hundred pages or so, the 200 pages that follow the ship sinking made the book almost unbearable.  All that early momentum was lost in an utterly boring tale of survival.  And even though Martel comes close to saving his tale with an interesting twist at the end, that middle and the expectations Martel himself sets in the beginning is just too much to over come.  If the whole of the book could have been more like the beginning this would have been a great novel, but instead all it becomes is a tedious tale that falls short of its own expectations.