Life of Pi

This book had such a strong start. I was already familiar with the plot line of this novel and the twist at the end as I had watched the film a good few years back. The first section of the novel that focuses on the pi the main protagonists childhood memories in India blew me away. I also liked that this section also presented pi's present life with his family in Canada. I enjoyed the bits in which the narrator interviews Pi Patel and discovers his wife and his children alongside gaining the wider story from pi of how he survived his ordeal in the Pacific. This section was beautifully written. I also really enjoyed the style and lyrical deliverance of Martel's writing within this section. Unfortunately, the rest of the novel was a continuous disappointment. The middle section which was the biggest segment of the book was a rather dry and tedious blow by blow account of pi's survival in a lifeboat stranded at sea. While it sounds insensitive, a detailed description of pi dissecting fish and turtles and building a raft don't provide the most riveting of pieces for a reader. I had to skim read through most of this section as it proved rather tiresome and repetitive. Then the endings big reveal seemed to lack the shock and horror and emotional revelation I remembered from the film. I found the revelation of the animals being symbolic of his fellow survivors and himself rather hollow and the reveal lacked the big crescendo I had anticipated. Overall Yann Martel is an incredibly talented writer and this book was an original concept and an intriguing idea . However the survival elements of this novel left me unengaged and frustrated and the reveal didn't give me the feels I really wanted. So for that reason, unfortunately this novel sits between a 3 and a 3.5 stars for me.