Author Archives: susan

Interesting to note here that Martel plays with the notion of time in many ways. He has brought in characters that have changed the time frame from present to past, meaning the narrator retelling Pi's story and then Pi's story … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Chapter 78 has some fine writing and some nice insight into how our character of Pi has matured in face of the situation of survival.  While the previous chapter got into some fairly gross specifics of what he has come … Continue reading → Continue reading →

While there is nothing in particular that I can call awesome in Martel's writing style, the voice and diction of the story is such that the reader does feel comfortable inside the storyworld. There were some very well put sentences, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Even as I wonder how a boat, a boy, and a tiger on the high seas can go on for a couple hundred pages, I see Martel filling up paragraphs with lists and details. While it is interesting enough, and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

For it looks like this is Pi's reality, and it's gone on a long while now and looks (okay, I skimmed ahead) like it's going to go on for most of the rest of the book: a boat, a boy, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

With every bang the animals jumped and looked alarmed, but they were not to be distracted from their main business of roaring in each other's faces. I was certain the shouting match would turn physical. Instead it broke off abruptly … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I love it when fantasy is so close to the truth that it is hard to tell the difference. Pi and his family have left India for Canada when their ship sinks and Pi finds himself on a lifeboat alone … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Just realizing now that the italicized chapters are those of author intrusion; Martel perhaps, as narrator, rightly in the future, looking back at his first meetings with the character, Pi. Maybe close reading is not close enough, or too close … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Not that I would take a novelist's opinion on religion any more as fact than I do some movie star's slant on politics, when there is a seed of thought to ponder, a different perspective, it's always an added bonus … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I love it; the comparisons Pi is coming up with to get his head around the Catholic God and in particular, the Son, Jesus: This Son is a god who spent most of His time telling stories, talking. This Son … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Martel has foreshadowed religion as a topic that would be considered by Pi, by his comparing it to zoos, and in subtle ways that certainly led to his admission that religion is indeed important to him, and Hinduism formed his … Continue reading → Continue reading →

There are interesting little tidbits of thought that Martel drops through his story that seem to have some special importance, that relate to man’s questioning of life, yet are put in a stark, interesting way. Here, Pi has just listened … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Exactly that; close reading that strings phrases together to digest them in bites like appetizers. It was a huge zoo, spread over numberless acres, big enough to require a train to explore it, though it seemed to get smaller as … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This reverts back to Kundera’s (and I have a feeling that Kundera may be with me for life) theory on recurrence, and in particular, on Karenin’s joie de vivre being dependent upon repetition: For that is what animals are, conservative, … Continue reading → Continue reading →