Dec 29, 2003 06:55 PM
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(Updated Dec 29, 2003 06:55 PM)
This booker winner is a preposterous but utterly enchanting story about a young Indian boy adrift in a lifeboat with his good friend, a Bengal tiger, and some other zoo animals.
Martel's ''Life of Pi'' might sound ridiculous, but by the time Martel throws Pi out to sea, his quirkily magical and often hilarious vision has already taken hold. (After all, this is, as Martel promises us, a ''story that will make you believe in God.'') Martel frames the novel as the reminiscences of an older Pi as recorded by the author and intermittently offers his own observations of this curious Indian man. The device works: Martel is so mesmerized by Pi that one can't help but be enchanted too.
Pi's lost-at-sea story never drags. The slow journey is spiked with fascinating survival scenes, as when Pi and Richard Parker meet a school of flying fish: ''They came like a swarm of locusts. It was not only their numbers; there was also something insect-like about the clicking, whirring sound of their wings.'' Pi attempts to catch the fish for food; the tiger is better at it: ''Many were eaten live and whole, struggling wings beating in his mouth ... It was not so much the speed that was impressive as the pure animal confidence, the total absorption in the moment.''
Enchanting escapades such as the one re-created above and the authors narration of the same keep the story line absorbing throughout.
Pi's story is so extraordinary that when he finally makes it ashore, he offers a comparatively boring version of the tale to two researchers, acknowledging that humans don't have much of a taste for the miraculous. This played-down version makes Pi's true tale, thanks to Martel's beautifully fantastical and spirited rendering, all the more tempting to believe
barus.
