booksbeccabuys

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.