That's all the title of today's template post. I am not sure what that entails, as I've already listed my favourite books, and they were all fictional! Well, tomorrow's is "A non-fiction book" so I guess it makes a bit of sense if your favourite book was "The Origin of Species".
But it doesn't say "favourite" book it just says "A" book. Hmmm. Ponders.
OK.
Life of Pi.
A Booker Prize winner. Lauded critically worldwide and I hated every word of it.
None of it made much sense at all. Or rather it did make sense in a rather heavily ladled on way. It's obvious from the very start that the tale being told is utterly impossible, so it is an allegorical imagining of what happened.
And that doesn't work for these reasons.
I just couldn't see what people saw in this book. All the way through the author seemed to be going "see, see what I did there? See how clever my writing is? Isn't it clever? It's not really a tiger... Geddit? Geddit??" And I'd got bored with that in the first few pages. And it went on for page after page.
To make it worse at the end some 'investigators' turn up and Pi (the main character) explains the analogy in really simple words, almost in the way there's a play within a play in Hamlet to explain the plot. Pi tells his tale, then says "Oh the tiger is this person, the zebra is this, the hyena is this..." and the author is saying "I've realised you are a bit dim and not as clever as I am, and because I'm so so clever, I'd better explain this to you..."
I got it.
I saw the symbolism.
It wasn't subtle, it was obvious.
I shan't be wasting any more time with Yann Martel's works, but don't let that stop you. Its only my opinion.
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