I miss the heat of India, the food, the house lizards on the walls, the musicals on the silver screen, the cows wandering the streets, the crows cawing, even the talk of cricket matches, but I love Canada.Now, I am quite sure -- or at least very willing to believe, without having any personal knowledge of the fact -- that Mr. Martel has been to India, either to research this book or previously for unrelated reasons. Maybe he lived half his life there, for all I know. What I do know: I have never been to India or its surrounding nations and I could have written that passage. In fact, I think it's quite close to what I would write if I were asked to imagine an Indian person, and tell me what he would miss about India, given your own completely superficial knowledge of the area. Well gee, it's hotter there than here, Indian food is awesome, Hindus worship cows and let them roam the streets, and don't they have that inexplicable love of Bollywood musicals and cricket? Yeah, those are things an Indian guy would like that are not so available here in Canada. There's no detail, absolutely nothing personal. The only thing that comes close is the crows cawing, and that's not much.
Really, though, the central weakness is a lack of internality. Pi is a very reflective, and hyper religious, little boy, but his internal reflections are all incredibly flat. He tells you he prays. He tells you he misses his (presumed dead) mother, father and brother. But these facts don't do anything to him, or to us. They're just there. There's a funny scene before the shipwreck where Pi's Hindu, Christian and Muslim mentors converge on him and his parents. The parents are shocked that he's religious at all. The three wise men fight over who Pi really belongs to. But, on the boat, it doesn't change anything, except that in addition to fishing and catching water, he prays. And sometimes thinks of God's greatness when, for instance, he sees lightning. But it all felt so surface. I imagine others feel differently, since it appears to be a pretty popular book.
Where it's best is in the descriptions of the tiger, Richard Parker, like so:
Richard Parker was tougher than I was in the face of these fish, and far more efficient. He raised himself and went about blocking, swiping and biting all the fish he could. Many were eaten live and whole, struggling wings beating in his mouth. It was a dazzling display of might and speed. Actually, it was not so much the speed that was impressive as the pure animal confidence, the total absorption in the moment. Such a mix of ease and concentration, such a being-in-the-present, would be the envy of the highest yogis.There are also many plays on words: when he was 'tougher than I was in the face of these fish' he's using the idiomatic expression to echo the moment half a page earlier where Pi was hit in the face by a flying fish, and freaked out rather than eating it (he thought the fish was actually Richard Parker's giant paw smacking him and cried out something to the effect of, 'take me now'). I can often enjoy a play on words, so a few points for that.
Overall, I didn't enjoy reading it. I didn't feel happy while I was reading, I felt I was getting through with it. The ending was a bit stronger than the rest, though. It caused me to briefly reflect on what had come before. That's always a good thing in a book.
