Life of Pi is the winner of the Booker Prize and was given a ridiculous amount of critical praise. It was given so much so that I was a little unsure about reading it, that it could not possibly live up to the hype. In one sense, I was right. The novel did not live up the hype of the critical praise. However, this is not to say that Life of Pi is not an excellent novel or that it was not a fine piece of literature.

This is the story of Piscine Patel, or, Pi as he comes to be called. Pi is sixteen years old and lives in India. His father is a zookeeper, but because of the job situation in India the family is leaving and moving to Canada. Since their zoo is closing, they had to sell the animals to other zoos, some of which are in Canada and they are helping to transport some of the animals before settling in their new country. Somehow the ship sinks, and Pi ends up on a lifeboat a lifeboat that he happens to share with a tiger.

Can Pi survive? How does Pi survive? How can a novel be interesting when the majority of the pages take place with a 16 year old boy on a raft with a tiger? Surprisingly enough, this is an interesting novel and I actually cared to find out how it all played out. It was fascinating to see how Pi was able to survive day after day (and not get mauled by the tiger, later named Richard Parker).

I don t think Life of Pi is going to make my list of favorite books, but Yann Martel was successful in holding my attention throughout the novel and made me want to keep turning the page to find out what happens next and how it happened. Good book.