Life of Pi

Life of Pi was a strange and wonderful book. I'm not sure I understood it all. Occasionally it is good to read a book that leaves you a little confused, that introduces ideas you are not quite ready for, that leaves you feeling a little shipwrecked yourself, on a sea of ideas, conflicted by the vastness of the landscape and the overwhelming challenge and predicament of making sense of the author's story and your own.

Vividly written and absorbing, Yann Martel tells the story of a sixteen-year-old Indian boy who is shipwrecked on a 26-foot lifeboat with an injured zebra, a hyena, an orang-utan and a 450-lb. Bengal tiger. It's fascinating how he subdues the tiger and survives the elements and his fierce battle with despair, powerful to read of the forces that overwhelmed and inspired him on his journey. A few times, rain or flying fish or a mysterious island come into the story at just the right time, and the reader has to decide whether to increase one's faith or give in, much like Pi himself. Deeply spiritual, Piscine follows the tenets of three of the world's major religions, deciding at fourteen become a practicing Hindu, Christian and Muslim, all at the same time. History has converged all the world's faith in India, adding to the rich confused stew that culture has become over time.

Pi is a passionate and loving narrator, who tells the author early in the story that this story will inspire him to believe in God. You have to admire a novel with such an ambitious aim, particularly in an age when so many stories are written merely to enrich the author and titillate the audience with the same repackaged twaddle that exists everywhere else in our culture, which has become a confused stew of its own, lost in a numbness of sensation and envy. We're the most filled but the least satisfied generation in history, on a crazed lifeboat of a planet with forces well beyond our control. Pi's story suggests our only salvation lies in subduing our appetites and our fears, in learning what is essential to navigate in waters that are both unfamiliar and awe-inspiring.

In the locker of the lifeboat Pi finds cans of water and packets of food, fishhooks and blankets, lengths of rope and lifejackets. He fashions a raft he tethers to the lifeboat, to keep a survivable distance between him and the Tiger while he works out their survival. He teaches himself how to fish and collect water distilled from the sea. He has a whistle he uses to train the Tiger. Did I mention his father had been a zookeeper. When the boat runs aground in a remote part of Baja Mexico Pi has to tell his story to some skeptical investigators, tow Japanese men, representatives of the shipping line. He hoards their cookies and torments them with alternative versions of his story, neither of which they truly believe.

I believed every word. I remember August Strindberg (Max von Sydow holding a lantern to Paul Gaugin's paintings in A Wolf at the Door, saying "I will dream of these paintings for a long time." A good story, or a compelling work of art, does that. It turns over in your mind many times. It becomes the soil of your imagination, rich and fertile for your hopes.