The Life of Pi by Yann Martel (book review)
16/05/2014 § Leave a comment
Piscine “Pi” Patel, the Indian son of a zoo-keeper, recounts a memoir that amounts to much more than floating across the Pacific with only a lifeboat and a cantankerous Bengal tiger. Drifting through the Life of Pi is a meditative, theological experience. Delicate storytelling brings waves of comedic happenstance as well as shocking revelations, which can be difficult to read. Martel successfully strikes a balance between adventure and allegory with a shrewd blend of fact, fiction and a few things in-between. Its messages are sufficiently refined and ambiguous to render the story an uplifting one for atheists and believers alike.
The Red House by Mark Haddon (book review)
11/10/2013 § 1 Comment
Two estranged, dysfunctional families reunite for a week-long sojourn to a rented Red House in England’s rainy countryside. The consciousness of the story flits between eight characters in a narrative that is sparsely populated with insightful observations and overborne by self-conscious characterisation. Characters, young and old, are excessively cerebral and plagued by supposedly shocking illicit desires. The Red House is a gloomy read, pervaded by resentment and guilt. By the close of the book little has truly changed and the reader is left depressingly aware of the character’s lives continuing to tick relentlessly on beyond the last page.
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman (Book Review)
15/07/2011 § Leave a comment
Pullman, in this self-proclaimed ‘story’, skews biblical events by providing Jesus with a familial antithesis, a twin brother; ineffectual to the plot in all but assuming an act of a pre-existing canonical ‘scoundrel’. This is a whistle-stop tour of the life of the Christian saviour that fails to deliver the controversy its title implies. Misgivings about organised religion, whispered with subtlety in His Dark Materials, are shouted brashly via the implausible and bias hindsight of Jesus. Biblical diction is used inconsistently, and paraphrasing of famous quotations diminishes their impact. Further, supposed insights into the development of stories are simplistic and unoriginal.
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