"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense." --Mark Twain
When many people saw Jim Carey in The Truman Show, they felt they had never seen anything quite like it. That is the feeling people have when they read the Life of Pi, a novel by Yann Martel.
Life of Pi is about a young boy, Pi Patel, the gifted son of an Indian zookeeper. Pi's family is emigrating to Canada on a freighter, along with a zebra, a spotted hyena, an orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger. When the ship sinks, Pi finds himself in a 26-foot lifeboat with the tiger. Day after day
the two drift in an uneasy truce that seems can only be punctuated by death.
Martel does such a good job of creating this innocent, open boy he feels real, and his fear is as real as any we would feel in the company of a cat who can rip us apart at any moment. Our belief in the boy and the detail with which this extraordinary event is told turns our reluctant belief into hopeful belief.
Then there is a twist at the end which is almost totally to be disbelieved. Everything which happened is explained in a way which seems more real, yet we don't want to accept it.
We are convinced of one story and then a second, better explanation of the facts appears. Most readers will hesitate to believe, though they will. The first explanation is a story of good, the second of villainy. The first is a story of triumph, the second of tragedy.
At one point Pi says, "My greatest wish--other than salvation--was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One that I could read again and again, with new eyes and fresh understanding each time."
In a way, this is that story. Ultimately it asks us to decide what is true, and how we know what we know.
A tale well-told is a pleasure, and this is a tale well-told. (Also available as an audiobook, ably read by Jeff Woodman.)
