a little over-hyped. Fluffy metaphors for the masses? I should have known. This book had way too much popularity to live up to the hype . . . and the “Readers Group Guide” seems pretentious for a second novel. Rapid critical praise for a novel almost always disappoints, and Life of Pi is no exception. If you doubt me, just read a random sampling of the hundreds of gushingly superficial 5-star reviews here on Amazon – you’ll get seasick before you’ve even left port. For more honest, well-rounded and stimulating assessments of this book you’ll have to look in the 2-3 star reviews; of which I highly recommend Eric Squire’s review entitled, “Unconvincing Psychological Allegory”, from 12/28/2002.

I admit, I was intrigued by Yann Martel’s opening “Author’s Note” in which he describes how Life of Pi came to be. The honesty and personal tone of this opening was appealing, and the promise that I was about to hear a story that would make me “believe in God” was a wonderful build up. The first chapter in which Pi has already suffered his ordeal and is making insightful comparisons between his college studies in both religion and zoology and the three-toed sloth of Brazil was promising, and I was excited about this book. Suddenly we’re in India and Pi is describing his unique life as the son of an Indian zookeeper and how he got his rather odd name. This should’ve been interesting but takes up approximately 90 pages and somehow manages to bore. I found Pi’s character rather unsympathetic and difficult to relate to. His story quickly becomes meandering, dry and tedious. We discover that Pi is named after a family friend who loved swimming and swimming pools (i.e. Piscine) – okay, unique and sort of interesting. Zoos are praised for having saved the lives of many animals who supposedly prefer their safe and familiar confines to the unpredictable wild (and the rest of the book reads like a paen against nature and the wild). The Pondicherry zoo at which his father works no longer exists, or never existed? Pi struggles to practice Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam (a theme much, much better explained and explored in E.M. Forster’s, Passage to India) but can’t combine all three into a personal belief system. Why not? I’m not sure, but these themes which at first seemed intriguing quickly lose their interest as author Yawn Martel gets bogged down and lost in what ulimately comes across as an amateurish experiment for a creative-writing class at your local community college. We readers are his guinea-pigs, or “meercats” (what the hell is a meercat anyway, and what was Martel thinking? see below for some suggestions). When we reach the Pacific, and Martel’s vivid imagination (or is it Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar’s imagination? whom Martel “borrowed from” but at least acknowledges as being “the spark of life” in his introduction on page xii), Pi is supposedly trapped in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, an injured zebra, an orangutan, and a hyena. Pi’s life promise’s to get wild and crazy now. Amazingly, it doesn’t. Somehow I grew bored after a few chapters and this was my greatest source of wonderment and perplexity after I’d finished this promising story. How was this possible given all the colorful animal symbolism, “deep” religious allegory, and “complex” literary metaphors? I still don’t know, but somehow Yawn botched it.

In the end Pi gets sane and straight for a few brief pages when he tells two silly Japanese investigators from the ship company what “really” happened after having told the story we have just read. They obviously don’t believe the story, rightly believing him to be insane. Yet, for some odd reason Martel feels it necessary to portray these two Japanese in a stereotypically demeaning manner and they come across as aetheistic, noodle-eating, bonzai-tree worshipping goofballs. These last passages almost border on racial biggotry. This potentially offending dialogue seemed more appropriate for a racially charged WWII era comic-book instead of a 21st century novel.

I like symbolism and allegory and I like it complex and meaningful, but both are juvenile and fluffy in this story, which make them appropriate for younger readers, or more superficial a-dolts on an airplane for vacation. Martel asks us to choose between stories. Rubbish! You don’t have to choose between “animal story” and “people story” any more than you need to choose between religions. And that IS the point of the book, if anything at all. It’s not either/or, but both or none. If “none”, then Pi and Martel are pathological liars and you’ve just wasted your time in reading this ficiton without any basic comprehension or understanding of metaphor – you can go home now. If it’s “both” then you are moderately enlightened, and understand that Pi was shipwrecked with his wounded mother whom he symbolically represents with a friendly, loving orangutan named Orange Juice (the color orange being itself a symbol for Hinduism in Pi-ology). The wounded zebra is the injured sailor, and the savage hyena the nasty French cook (another racially motivated stereotype?). And of course, the tiger is Pi’s brutish animal nature itself (again, orange because he is a Hindu by birth). The compulsion to tell his travails in the form of an allegory is what’s at the heart of this book. My question for you is do we really need to be asked whether or not “. . . the telling of something always become[s] a story?” (p. 302). As human beings exposed to thousands of years of literature we already know this, right? The Japanese Laurel & Hardy want facts, not “invention”. So Pi Martel rewards us with this pearl of deep, semiotic wisdom – in riddle form of course: “Isn’t the telling about something – using words, English or Japanese – already something of an invention? Isn’t just looking upon this world already something of an invention?” (p. 302).

In sum:

(Yawn Martel) “I can tell you what I want, how I want because I’m a writer, creator, and historical revisionist of my own life. You can believe what you want, but you’ll have no power to tell me I’m wrong – especially in terms of my relgious beliefs. There, take that book club readers of America!”

READING GROUP GUIDE ADDENDUM: As for the “mysterious” self-consuming algae-island and meercats, I have various interpretations for you (all equally as absurd as this book), but you’ll have to choose . . . and of course, how you choose will define you as a religious person or aetheistic animal.

A. Hashish induced hallucination the night Mr. Martell made his bar-bet about how easily duped American readers could be.

B. A finger-painting experiment gone awry that the author was working on while writing this book.

C. A philsophical attempt to symbolize psychological transformation through a hallucinatory vision in the first moments after a starving Pi regains his vision.

D. An oil slick.

E. A religous epiphany in the form of a seaweed morass, and the victory of Islam over Pi’s soul. Mecca. Islam = green “is-land” – get it? “Is-Lam, Is-Land”. The orange Pi eats = Hinduism; the “teeth” in the orange and “bones” within the island = Christianity (white); thus, Hinduism & Christianity consumed and contained within the final summation of Islam. The Meercats/sea-birds/otters/flies/frogs/whatever = uncritical masses (“To see so many beings bending down at the same time reminded me of prayer time in a mosque”) (p.266).

F. Sea-otters playing and swimming in a lost shipment of marijuana that Pi has just smoked before waking up on the shores of Mexico.

G. The entrails of a leviathan representing the “refuse” of Judaism, Buddhism, and Shintoism which Pi obviously wanted nothing to do with at first but is now sinking in as a punishment.

PS: Pi-bashing aside, I must say that this book was moderately entertaining and so deserves two, not one star. I finished afterall and it did provoke a little thought to go along with this “critical” review, which if you don’t agree with, I hope has at least entertained. Also, it’s healthy to read weak novels like this every so often so as to remind yourself why your time is better spent reading the classics. Mr. Martell has created a story that makes me believe in God afterall – the literay Gods that is. Mediocre books like this make me appreciate the rare literary gems that I’ve found in my readings (many of which I’ve reviewed) and give me a whole lot more respect for those authors who manage to create the masterpieces they have. In sum, poor to mediocre literature has its place – let’s just make sure it’s given it’s proper place so as not to delude the masses any more than they already are: 2 stars, no more folks.