![]() ![]() He allows the narrative voice and the intriguing plot move the reader even as he laces the path with many kinds of metaphysical questions that have perplexed humans over the years. The writing style of Yann Martel is simple and has a smooth flow. While the story is anchored in historic reality, the plot itself is the stuff of biblical myths and the realism is mixed in with elements of the fantastic (Guignery 161). The book also has characteristics of magic realism. It is set in real locations and told in documentary style with no reference to dreams, madness or hallucinations. It straddles the subgenres of utopia and contemporary narrative mode of animal fable (Armitt 40). ![]() Life if Pi is not strictly a fantasy novel. Since the entire book is told in flashback, the reader already knows how things will turn out, yet there is a lot of suspense. ![]() He combines dramatic episodes, scientific knowledge, well-written hallucinatory passages, humor and gruesome detail to move the story along. Martel carries off this section with aplomb. Soon only Pi and the tiger remain, and Pi must find a way to survive not only hunger, the elements and shark-infested waters but also the constant fear that Richard Parker will make him his lunch. He is the lone human survivor on a 26-foot lifeboat, which he shares with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The bulk of the book concerns the 227 days Pi spends adrift in the Pacific Ocean after the Japanese freighter carrying his family and many zoo animals sinks. So doing, the author moves into the narration of a postmodern novel with stories set within the main story. An elderly man in Pondicherry, India, tells the author that he has a story that can make him believe in God. The book “Life of Pi” by Canadian writer Yann Martel, winner of the 2002 Booker Prize narrates delightfully, the story of Piscine Patel, who shortens his name to Pi. ![]()
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