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

The Death of Ivan Ilyich (2006)

By Leo Tolstoy
Well, I must say I do feel proud of myself having read some Tolstoy, even if it was only a little shortie like this one. Perhaps one day I will manage to read War and Peace – not this Readathon, though. Interesting that the publishers (Penguin) felt the need to have a testimonial on the front cover from Zadie Smith (‘Every time I read it, I find my world put under an intense, unforgiving microscope’). Not to belittle Smith, but it does seem a bit like getting Michael Leunig to talk up Rembrandt’s paintings, in hopes of making them seem hip and modern, when their work is a different kettle of fish altogether.

Spoiler alert: Don’t read on if you don’t want to know what happens. Still here? Sure you want to know? Okay: Ivan Ilyich dies. There, I’ve said it. I know this seems kind of obvious, given the title of this book, but I confess it came as a bit of a surprise.

Now, Tolstoy writes with an unerring sense of the satirical (in people’s actions, thoughts, motivations and so on), which kind of tricked me into thinking this book might be amusing, and that maybe Ivan Ilyich managed to cheat death somehow, or at least died with a fair amount of panache – perhaps also I was still in the grip of The Master and Margarita. Also I thought maybe his wife had some kind of secret plot to kill him going on, when in fact Ivan Ilyich just becomes ill and dies, fairly straightforwardly, but not pleasantly. (This red herring I gleaned from the blurb on the back cover, which I accuse of being slightly misleading).

No, this book details a man’s realisation that his death in unescapable, not just something that happens to other people, and in this realisation begins to question whether anything about his life was at all worthwhile. At the end of this book I had a slow, dim, small sort of epiphany. I’d always heard that Russian writers were pretty heavy going, but assumed it was something to do with the writing style and a cast of thousands with complicated Russian names. But it is the unflinching grimness of the subject matter, not the writing or the style, that is the source of the heaviness. The book was in fact exceptionally easy to read. It is, as Zadie Smith implies, pretty intense. It’s very good. But don’t read it at two o’clock in the morning, whatever you do.

Rating: 8 out of 10

The Master and Margarita (2006)

By Mikhail Bulgakov
I wanted this book to be one of my favourite books of all time, but it isn’t – which isn’t to say I didn’t like it; it was enormous fun!! Just look at the rating I gave it!! I did enjoy it, but it didn’t move me, I guess. (So eat a prune…).

The Devil arrives in Moscow (during Stalin’s era) in the guise of a Mr Woland, professor of black magic, with an entourage that includes a kind of rubbery-looking man named Koroviev, a man with a fang named Azazello, a nude witch called Hella (her character is not terribly developed, unfortunately) and a large walking talking living cat, Behemoth. (I became quite fond of Behemoth, but it might have just been because he was a cat). They proceed to cause havoc, especially amongst the local literary elite, many of whom are of course athiests, and pompous to boot, and could be said to get their just desserts.

It’s all a bit like a “Carry on Satan” film until the character of Margarita appears, who decides to see if she can use Woland to find her lost lover, an unnamed man (the “Master”) who has checked himself into the local asylum without telling her. He has written a novel about Pontius Pilate, known of course for having Jesus executed, which Margarita thinks is a work of genious (she might be biased, of course) and Woland finds it of interest because of course he was there at the time. The story of Pontius Pilate is woven throughout the whole story, I think with the aim of showing him redeemed at the end of the novel, but I’m not quite sure about that. I confess I was a bit mystified by the whole Pontius bit, which is perhaps another reasons why this book wasn’t a fave.

Rating: 8 out of 10

The Passion (2004)

By Jeanette Winterson
After reading a few of Winterson’s books now (Sexing the Cherry, Oranges are not the only fruit, Art Objects, the Lighthousekeeper and this one) I profess to being a fan, particularly after her visit to the Adelaide Festival’s Writers’ Week. She said that week that she wasn’t into the whole self-help thing, but by golly if she wanted to start a cult she could do it by snapping her fingers, we were hanging on her every word.

OK so I had a revelation while reading this book; I think I’ve figured out that love is the great theme of all Winterson’s books. (Took me a while, didn’t it?). Love is what it’s all about for Winterson; I suspect of her of being a hopeless romantic at heart. Life seems more of an intellectual experience for writers like Vonnegut and Burroughs, which is not to imply that love and other human emotions play no part in their writing (nor that Winterson’s writing is not intellectual); they’re just more cynical about the whole thing.

I really enjoyed The Passion, a novel set during the time of Napoleon’s empire. The first section especially was compelling, about French peasant Henri who becomes a cook for Napoleon, and who essentially hero-worships the emperor. Partly it is the historical element that makes it fascinating, but Winterson is such a beautiful writer than any enjoyment of her books has to come from the language as well.

The other main character of the story is Villanelle, daughter of a Venetian boatman, an employee of the casino. She falls passionately in love with another woman, who is married. Henri and Villanelle meet when both are sent on Napoleon’s march through Russia, in the section called “The Zero Winter”. Both of their hearts are damaged; Henri’s as he realises Napoleon is not worth his idolatry; Villanelle’s because she literally doesn’t have one - her lover has stolen it. (An odd bit of magical realism thrown in which didn’t quite work for me). As she says, though, it is a blessing – the zero winter is no place for a heart.

You know, sometimes I wonder if war and pain and suffering are worthwhile after all because of the stories and art and film that it has caused people to create. It can’t possibly be – rather this probably indicates something a little unpleasant about humans; to quote Vonnegut in Bluebeard: “what Pollock did lacked that greatest of all crowd pleasers, which was human sacrifice”.

Rating: 9 out of 10