Life of Pi is written by Yann Martel and was published in 2001. It was also adapted into a film by Ang Lee in 2012.
The book tells about how a 16-year-old Indian boy called Pi and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger called Richard Parker form an unlikely friendship. After surviving a sorrowful shipwreck, they live together in lifeboat for 227 days.
I didn’t really like Pi, but I thought that Richard Parker was a well written character. He really was a tiger, not a human being like animals in many books tend to be. I also adore how much research the writer must have done for the book.
I hated the first part of the book, which was mainly about Pi being a smartass and struggling with three different religions that he all somehow practised. There were also these really long and boring stories about how animals behave. Pi grew up in a zoo and his knowledge was what helped him to survive but if I wanted to know all the things he did I would just go and read a non-fictional book about animals or something. I almost stopped reading because I was so annoyed.
The second part, where all the action took place, was easily the best part of the book. Pi fights for his life and uses all the survival tactics he possibly can imagine. Somehow, eventually it all works out and both Richard Parker and Pi get their happy endings. The part started repeating itself after some time but was quite amusing anyway, and if it was the only part of book I would have liked it a lot more than I did.
In the third and final part, Pi meets the marital officials who investigate the shipwreck and tells them his story. The officials don’t believe a word he says, so he tells them another story where there are people instead of animals. The book leaves it to the readers to choose which one they prefer and believe to be true. It kind of bothered me that the book didn’t take a stance on which one was true. I was also confused with the whole narrator within narrator thing, and I think the writer tried too hard with that.