Life of Pi

Life of Pi by Yann Martel


My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The book jacket claims that this book will make me believe in God. All right! Nothing I like better than a challenge.

I admit I was slightly hesitant to start in reading. Was I sure I wanted to be converted? Is this really a good time for me to become religious? What if?

I started in. Young Indian boy grows up in a zoo, goes to school, struggles with unfortunate nickname, lives a typical post-colonial life (except for his conversion to both Islam and Christianity on top of his native Hinduism). Suddenly his parents decide to move family to Canada; they set sail.

All’s well so far--oops, the ship sinks. Pi and his lifeboat full of zoo animals are alone in the Pacific. Then the book goes on for another two hundred pages. The zebra, orangutan, and hyena become prey for the hungry Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Pi and the tiger survive.

"How can a book expect to be believable with a tiger named Richard Parker?" Andy demands when we discuss the book’s "believability." For some reason, Martel really, really wants us to believe that the book is a true story. He’s taken every precaution. He’s met with the main character in real life, gone over official transcripts, met with official people.

Everything... except write a believable story.

I absolutely believe that a human survivor of a shipwreck could live for seven months in an exposed lifeboat and float across the Pacific. I do. It has happened before and it will doubtless happen again.

I might be willing to believe that a Bengal tiger might also survive said shipwreck on said lifeboat. I don’t have too much of a problem believing that the things Martel writes about could happen. I just find it a bit... silly... that Martel demands our belief in such an upfront, unrelenting, insistent way.

All novels demand our belief, and we believe them as much as we are able, within the context of the story. We want to believe! When the author puts in tidbits that are unbelievable, we get mad and hop up and down! (Bad dialogue is so offensive for this reason. Switching north and south is absolutely unforgivable, even more so for its being unnecessary. May I never, ever read a Stephen King book again.)

So, Martel is not the first author to demand the reader’s belief in the story. He’s not the first to tell a story in the guise of telling "the truth." He just takes it a step further when he purposefully makes the story unbelievable and then harps on us for not believing it.

I’d rather believe Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. At least it was more fantastic.

Besides, the fact that people can survive incredible amounts of time at sea doesn’t require our belief. It is the truth. It has been proven. Stories more amazing than Life of Pi have really happened.

I can't forget the visceral gut reaction I had when I read the New Yorker article "The Castaways" by Mark Singer (Feb. 19, 2007)--three shark fishermen survived in an open boat for over nine months, floating from Mexico to Australia; were found and rescued, baffling everyone. This is a story to inspire faith! This is reality. Lots of people apparently didn’t believe their story. Sound familiar?

Reality doesn’t care if we believe in it. Does God exist if we don’t believe in him/her/it? If God is real, then it surely doesn’t require our belief to make it so. You can guess if I’m a full-fledged God-believer now, or not.

Martel seems to have had a marvelous time writing this book and, I’m willing to admit, could have based it on a true story. I still don’t quite see what all the fuss was about. I mean, two hundred pages lost at sea...

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