Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I passed this book up perhaps dozens of times in the bookstore, before finally relenting. From the description on the back of the dust jacket, it just did not seem like a story that would interest me. Plus, several of the review snippets on the book -- essentially praising the author for making a book with such a spare story into a great novel -- seemed to me a little like damning with faint praise. As it turns out, I was half right. I didn't like the story very much. Well, actually, I very much liked the first hundred pages or so, which took place on land and described our protaganist; a young Indian son-of-a-zookeepper. But I found the story thereafter that took place at sea to be a little too slowly paced for my tastes. And some of the gore -- particularly the detailed discussion of the butchering of various sea fish and animals -- was too repetitive and, well, gross. But, it turns out, the story of a boy on a boat with a tiger is not really what the novel is "about" at all. Instead, it's a novel that uses its backstory to ask a straightforward question: Do we need stories and fables to believe in God? (SPOILERS follow.) At the end of this novel, we are confronted squarely with enduring questions about the limits of faith. How can we believe in God when a wonderful, kind, vegan, pious boy endures tragedy for no good reason? How can that boy continue to believe in God when he witnesses, first hand, how human nature emerges in its cruelest form as 4 castaways on a life boat essentially turn into animals in less than 24 hours. How can he believe in God when he watches helplessly as his mother is brutally murdered for no discernable reason? And how can any of us believe in God when extraordinary measures turn this gentle, pious boy into a murderer himself? Can we find God, this novel asks, solely in the "dry, yeastless, factuality" of this everyday world, where God seemingly refuses to intevene? The answer, the boy decides, is that we cannot. We need the stories, the fables. So the boy spins a yarn that we are told, "will make you believe in God" -- a phrase that seems filled with hope and faith in the book's first chapter but drenched in irony in its final chapter. It is interesting to read the other Amazon reviews -- many of which are simply outstanding. But it appears that many of you take away from this novel a sense of spirituality and view it as a faith-reaffirming book. I must respectfully disagree. In fact, it is a book that is very pessimistic about faith and about the legends that various faiths use to help themselves believe. Not that it is entirely bleak about faith; as Pi tells us, to ignore or doubt the fables and doubt the existence of God, "is to miss the better story," and to live a life that, at least in Pi's view, is hardly worth living. (And Pi practices what he preaches -- actively observing multiple faiths even years after his horrible experience.) Still, the final message -- that "the story with the animals is better," and "so it goes with God" is, in some senses, heartbreaking, and hardly faith-affirming. Still, a novel that makes you think about such things is difficult to criticize merely because its conclusions might be somewhat pessimistic. And if you're afflicted with the type of mind that likes to continue to mull books over after you've put them down, this one will not disappoint. Or, maybe it's just a book about a boy and a tiger on a boat, in which case it's probably not worth reading. (Insert smiley face.)