|
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
3.14 and so on
Title: Life of Pi
Author: Yann Martel
Bookmark: the official recycled bookmark of the Union Pacific Railroad
When I started reading this (yes, because of the movie), I remembered that it had been reviewed here previously, but I had forgotten every word of the review. I just re-read it, and completely agree. The novel starts by tooting its own horn, with the purported author's tale of how he discovered the story (it's told as though he found Pi as an adult living in Canada and got the story from him) upon meeting a man in a tea shop in India who told him he had a story that would "make you believe in God." Old man tells writer to go find Pi in Canada, author begins friendship with adult Pi, Pi begins telling his story. So begins Part Two of the three-part book.
I love a good survival story, and if it's true, even better. This book has neither quality. You'd think that putting a boy in a small boat with a large tiger in the middle of the Pacific Ocean would lead to a great survival story, but it doesn't. I was actually disappointed when he discovered the overwhelming wealth of survival equipment in the lifeboat's storage locker. Like Kate, I was frustrated that after going to such lengths to make everything about the journey totally believable, there's a sudden sci-fi/fantasy twist in the eleventh hour which hangs around just long enough to make you think, "ok, so maybe the first 321 pages were just a set-up, and this is the real story that gets everybody so worked up," and is then passed over and forgotten. I was already annoyed that he had bumped into another lonely shipwreck survivor in the middle of the Pacific--that was too much stretch for me--and suddenly he finds a mysterious floating island? It felt like Martel's publisher told him "we're about thirty-six pages shy. Can you pad this with something?" "Well, I have this really fun idea for a sci-fi short story; it's a little like Perelandra, but the island is carnivorous, and chock-full of fish-chomping meerkats." "Whatever. Stick it in there."
Yeah, sure, it's a nice, diverting read. It is not as life-changing as everyone seems to think. Honestly, it's a little annoying. There's a couple scenes at the end when two Japanese guys are interviewing Pi in a Mexican hospital, and occasionally have side conversations between themselves in Japanese (translated in the book) so he can't understand. It's the best part of the whole book. It shows great humor, and the dialog is entertaining, with funny bits both in the words shared and in the actions described (Pi, after being stuck on a boat with a tiger for almost a year, composing soliloquies about food and hunger, keeps asking them for cookies. They comply, knowing that he has piles of cookies hidden under his bedsheet. When they get tired and frustrated about his story, he offers them cookies which they graciously accept. There's also a funny exchange about how arduous their drive from California was, and he consoles them about their difficult journey.). But it feels a little like a shaggy dog joke, since it comes after 365 pages of set-up.
I've lost interest in the movie.Labels: adventure, Canada, cannibalism, finding oneself, fish, monster, talking animals, undeserving classics, young protagonists
posted by reyn at
11:23 AM
0
comments
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Oddly Bland
Ti: The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride
(ARC Ed, HC pub Jun 09)
Au: Daniel James Brown
Bookmark: Dogeared corners, b/c I'm racist against ARCs
I had never read or heard much about the Donner Party, and only knew the most basic of details about what they resorted too. That was my main reason for picking up the book, and had I already known quite a bit about the history, I might not have finished this account.
The author tries to tell the story, not really from the perspective of one member of the party, Sarah Graves, but does focus on her quite a bit, I suppose as a way to humanize it. Somehow, the author manages to wander around in the zone between a solid history and a telling of one person's experiences without really managing either. Granted, in his intro, he explains nearly all of the issues I had with the book, so I can't blame him for missing the mark - he wrote what he was aiming for: its not meant to be a comprehensive history, Sarah left little of her own writing, and so some things had to be inferred. While I'm sure the author is correct in saying that he can use universal human reactions to certain situations such as extreme cold and hunger to describe what the pioneers went through, he somehow does it in a squishy, timid way that just makes me feel deeply the fact that it's inferred and not altogether a solid fact about what was happening to anyone at the given time described.
All that said, what solid history he does cover is covered in an engaging way, and I wanted to read the whole thing to find out what happened to these people. Even though it was hard to connect what he described to Sarah in my mind, I was pretty fascinated by the physical, emotional and psychological reactions he describes people having in the face of these extreme conditions.
I wanted to really like this book, as it falls into one of my favorite reading categories of "creative non-fiction," but in the end I have to give it a high meh.
Labels: cannibalism, creative nonfiction, o pioneers, touchy-feely history
posted by ~e at
12:27 AM
0
comments
|
|
