Life of Pi

By Yann Martel
In the beginning I found this book irritating; a character announces sententiously that “this is a story that will make you believe in God”, and the main character, Pi (short for Piscene) is a little righteous in his unwavering belief in God and his dismissal of agnostics and atheists alike. My hackles went up, me being a card-carrying atheist and all.

Pi, who grows up in his father’s zoo in Pondicherry, India, is also righteous on the matter of zoos, and this also made me cranky. Sure, animals can be content in a well-managed zoo enclosure and zoos are important for preserving endangered species, in particular, but he seemed to have no concept that animals could be bored – food and shelter isn’t everything. Also, he assumes all animals are the same - Pi describes cases where zoo animals have had the opportunity to escape and haven’t budged, or have returned to their cages after a short experience of the wider world. I once left my mouse cage door open all night; out of 11 mice only two bothered to escape. Some animals are just bolder or more curious or more active, whereas their brothers and sisters might be more cautious or afraid.

Listen to me, the animal behaviour expert. Where was I? As a Hindu, Pi becomes interested in other religions in his early teens and ends up becoming a baptised Christian and a Muslim as well. This, unsurprisingly, appalls the local priest, pandit and imam when they all meet (by chance) in the town market and congratulate Pi’s parents on their son’s piety and then realise he has been worshipping “at the altar” (so to speak) of all three on a regular basis.

This made me quite fond of Pi. It was interesting to read Pi’s impressions of two other religions, when compared to the Hindu faith – how ridiculously fallible yet reassuringly human Jesus Christ seemed when compared with Hindu gods (I mean, he walks places! What God does that??); Islam’s physicality of worship and its connection with the earth (worship outside!). I have no idea whether Yann Martel is Hindu himself (he was born in Spain so it seems unlikely) so I don’t know how much we can believe in the authenticity of these perceptions, but Pi’s beliefs are engaging - in Gandhi’s words “All religions are true” and in Pi’s own, “I just want to love God”.

This all reminded me of the CS Lewis’ Narnia series, where in The Last Battle the “good” god Aslan reveals that if you do good things in the name of the “bad” god, Tash, you are really doing them for Aslan, and vice versa. In other words, it doesn’t matter who’s name you are worshipping or the manner in which you are worshipping, it is your actions that count in the end. The Narnia books are often held in deep suspicion as being sneakily religious, like they were the literary form of a Mormon doorknocker, but I can testify that in at least one case they helped make an atheist. How silly it seemed to me that a religion should declare that there is only one right way to worship! If there is a God, or gods, it seems pretty unfair to condemn the majority of humanity to hell (or wherever) merely for using the wrong name.

I seem to have got distracted again. Anyway, the book picked up for me from there – Pi’s family decides to move to Canada during the political upheavals of the 1970s and arrange to sell all their animals, many to zoos in North America. They board a cargo ship, with their animals, and set sail. The ship sinks, and Pi finds himself on a life raft with a wounded zebra, a hyena, an orang-utan and very large Royal Bengal tiger.

The zebra, hyena and orang-utan don’t last very long; it is only Pi’s knowledge of animal behaviour that allows him to set up an uneasy truce with the tiger. This part of the book is quite lovely, even though it portrays suffering – in particular, Pi’s descriptions of the sea life he observes. It actually made me want to be adrift in a lifeboat, which I know is silly. (Also I would love to be adrift with a tiger, even though that is really silly, because it would eat me).

So I came round to this book in the end. There were some interesting philosophical bits, some thoughts are provoked (obviously, looking back at my previous rants!) and a mean twist at the end. (I won’t give it away for those who haven’t read it). In the end Martel seems to want you to think about what you want to believe is true – Christian, Muslim, Hindu or atheist – rather than what there is proof for.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (2003)

By Jean-Claude Carriere
Written as a sort of journal, this book details the holiday of the accident-prone Monsieur Hulot, as seen through the eyes of a terminally bored and jaded man on his annual holiday to some dreary beach in France. While some of the scenes are entertaining, this book ultimately failed for me because nothing really happened – no characters had a crisis or came to a greater understanding of anything about the world or the people in it. Also, I found it difficult to be sympathetic towards the character of the narrator, who obviously found his wife stupid, inane and boring and consequently his own life stupid, inane and boring but was too pathetic to do anything about it but be glad that poor old Monsieur Hulot was there to make an ass of himself and liven things up a bit.

When I saw this book at ye olde second-hand book sale I had a vague idea that it had been turned into a movie of some repute and therefore may be of literary merit. I have to say I was disappointed. When will I ever learn!!!

Rating: 3 out of 10

The Nanny Diaries (2004)

By Nicola Kraus & Emma McLaughlin
This book really wasn’t very good, but still somehow I kept reading. Nanny, our heroine, is employed by Mr and Mrs X, to look after their son Grayer. Mrs X, in particular, is so unbearably awful that you keep turning the pages in hopes that she will be socially humiliated, made to realise what an awful parent and worthless human being she is and then consequently die of shame.

Unfortunately this never happens. Nanny continues to work for the X’s, carrying out all of their unreasonable demands and never once fighting back. When she is sacked at the end of the novel she doesn’t even leave a few prawns hidden around the apartment for good measure. She does leave them a recorded message on the Nannycam they have installed in the apartment, but it wasn’t anywhere near as vitriolic as I would have liked.

I think what was most disturbing about this book, despite the authors’ protestations of fictional status, was that I am sure every incident in this book is based on fact, and that such shocking people really do exist. I just wanted to shake everybody – the X’s for obvious reasons, and Nanny for continuing to work for them.

Rating: 3 out of 10

The Flanders Panel (2004)

By Arturo Perez-Reverte
I probably became unfairly biased against this book, when the heroine, a Spanish paintings restorer called Julia, first lit up a ciggie in front of the 15th century Flemish painting she was “cleaning” in her lounge room, on page one. She smoked in front of the picture for the first seven pages and did so again and again throughout the entire novel. During the novel, she also had long hot showers in the adjacent bathroom, with the door open, ate her meals while gazing at it, and brought drunken not-to-be-trusted friends home to it. At one point, she even kissed the painting! I mean really. With all of this going on, it made it hard for me to concentrate on the quality of the writing, the plot and all those other aspects you are supposed to consider in a book review. Clearly, however, Perez-Reverte has not done his homework properly!!

Now, perhaps this is just jealousy speaking, but how could Julia possibly become “one of the art restorers most sought after by museums and antiquarians” within only a few years of finishing her degree? Rot, I say. Also, apparently she was a restorer known for “the respect she showed the original work, an ethical position not always shared by her colleagues.” Ooh, that whole paragraph made me mad.

OK, so what happened in the book? Julia finds some hidden inscription underneath the paint that suggests that one of the people depicted in the painting was murdered. She and her guardian Cesar link up with a master chess player called Munoz to try and figure out the mystery - the painting shows two people playing chess, so they try to figure out what moves have been made in the game from the positions of the pieces on the board, in order to figure out who was guilty. (Many tedious descriptions of chess moves ensue). Of course, all this business has great implications for the value of the painting and people start getting murdered in present day too, and Julia’s life is in danger! (Gasp).

I was in a bad mood with this book anyway, but once the thing was solved it reminded me of those documentaries on SBS where a bunch of crazed archaeologists try to reconstruct some bridge over a river in order to prove that the yes, the Romans could have done it this way! Emphasis on “could” – they still don’t have any real proof, but they make up some good stories along the way. Or some bad stories. And I’m afraid I thought this was one – no-one’s motivations seemed believable to me, and if anyone arched their eyebrow one more time or smiled without really smiling, I was going to scream.

My Dad did say that it made good reading at 2:00am flying home from South America though.

Rating: 2 out of 10