Book Review

I recently finished an incredible story I can highly recommend to everyone. The life of Pi by Yann Martel. Pi Patel is a sixteen year old boy living a perfectly lovely life in India with his mother, father and brother. His father is the director of a Zoo and Pi spends his childhood peacefully cohabiting with a wide and varied group from the animal kingdom. When his father decides to sell the zoo and move to Canada the family is uprooted unto an old cargo ship with many of the animals who are being sold to Zoo's in America. Halfway between Canada and India the ship sinks leaving Pi an orphan on a life raft with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra and a Bengal tiger. Pi must survive the elements and create resources from nothing while attempting not to be eaten. The young boy goes into his own heart of darkness relying on his spirituality, ingenuity and any information about animal behavior he has stored in his brain from his time growing up in a zoo. The story is long, savage, and difficult to get through at times. When we finally come to the end the curtain is lifted. The reader is left to question everything that has transpired. I was left breathless and wide eyed.