The Life of Pi Book Review by Rebecca

The novel “The Life of Pi” is written by Yann Martel. This is a fictional story. The main characters are Richard Parker, a 3-year-old 450 pound fully grown Royal Bengal tiger and Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi), a 16-year Indian boy. Pi grew up in Pondicharry where his father owned a zoo full of animals, including Richard Parker. His family decides to move to Canada traveling by boat and taking most of the animals to give to other zoos. The main setting is in a lifeboat where Pi found himself with a Hyena, a Zebra, Orang-utan, and Richard Parker after the boat sank.

Pi is very spiritual and wants to be a Hindu, Muslim, and Catholic. Pi was at sea for 227 days. The main conflict was that he was in a lifeboat with four fighting animals and after a while he was left with one tiger, which he decided to tame. He encountered a group of flying fish, many turtles, storms, whales, sharks, and man on another lifeboat who wished to eat him, and a carnivorous island with flesh eating trees. The main conflict was his need for survival in his deadly situation. Richard Parker and Pi were in need of each other and their friendship played an important role in all these events.

I liked the survival aspect to the book. This was shown when the author talks about how he fished, trained Richard Parker, and set up a raft. I also liked the bizzare experiences he encountered. I found the book little slow going at the start because it was talking about different religions but it was very exciting when the real story began and there is a real twist at the end. I encourage you to read this book.