The Proudfoot Review - Because Opinions Matter...

'It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion'.

This is the line that reverberates around my head from Yann Martel's masterpiece 'The Life Of Pi'.

Piscine 'Pi' Molitor Patel is an Indian boy from Pondicherry who after exploring issues of religion and spirituality, has to draw on what he has learned to survive 227 days in a lifeboat after the ship he was travelling on suddenly sinks at sea.

Pi is not your average Indian teenager. The son of the Pondicherry zoo keeper, Pi spends his days learning about working with and raising exotic animals. He has an insatiable appetite for learning and concurrently explores and converts to Christianity, Islam and Hinduism, taking what he need from each to help him understand his life, his family and himself.

At 16, Pi's father decides to close his zoo and move his family to Canada. Pi's father sells most of his animals to various zoos in America and they are loaded onto the same ship that will take Pi and his family to Canada. As the ship sinks, Pi is thrown onto a lifeboat by one of the ship's crew, a life boat already occupied by a Zebra and a hyena.

And so the real story begins....

Noticing Richard Parker thrashing around in the water, Pi instinctively throws him the life buoy. It is only when Richard Parker, a 200 kilogram Bengal tiger clamours on board, that Pi realises the folly of his actions. Throwing himself overboard, Pi soon discovers that the water is teeming with sharks and his chances of survival in the water are no better than in the boat.

Climbing back on board, Pi wedges an oar under a tarp and creates a barrier between himself and Richard Parker. Figuring he may survive if he can maintain this barrier, Pi sets about securing the tarp.

As an Orangutan floats by on a raft of bananas, Pi pulls her on board, completing the quartet of animals that will over the next weeks become the hunters and the hunted, until only Pi and Richard parker remain.

For the next 227 days aboard the boat, Pi survives by spending his time on a makeshift raft he has tied behind the boat and begins to train Richard Parker with a whistle and food from the sea, eventually developing a relationship not unlike that of a lion tamer and his subject.

While at sea, Pi a devout vegetarian, learns to kill and eat whatever he can catch however this is not nearly enough to keep the two survivors healthy and they become very ill. Pi becomes blind and can no longer catch food and when all seems lost, they come across another blind man amazingly floating along in his own lifeboat. The two talk for a while and eventually the stranger, intent on eating Pi, climbs aboard Pi's boat. Richard parker attacks the stranger and the tears that flow from Pi's eyes clear up his vision.

The pair float on for some time, coming across an island made entirely of algae and inhabited by meerkats. It is here that both Pi and Richard Parker regain their strength, Pi eating the algae and Richard Parker eating the meerkats. The island has its secrets however and Pi decides the pair can no longer remain there.

Eventually reaching a deserted Mexican beach after 227 days at sea, Richard Parker bounds off into the jungle while Pi is found on the beach by two fishermen. Taken to hospital, Pi is interviewed by representatives from the shipping company and after telling his story, encounters scepticism and disbelief.

 It is here that the story takes an unexpected turn...

Yann Martel takes us on a wonderful journey with The Life of Pi. Delivered at a pace that's both interesting and moving, Martel never lets his characters become more than a dangerous tiger or a lost boy. We know from the beginning that Pi survives because the story is in part, told in the first person yet Martel maintains our interest and curiosity with a bold, descriptive almost arcane storyline blended with an almost fairytale like subtext.

Highly recommended reading!