Life of Pi Family Review

A young man who survives a disaster at sea is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While cast away, he forms an unexpected connection with another survivor: a fearsome Bengal tiger.In Canada, a writer visits the Indian storyteller Pi Patel and asks him to tell his life story. Pi tells the story of his childhood in Pondicherry, India, and the origin of his nickname. One day, his father, a zoo owner, explains that the municipality is no longer supporting the zoo and he has hence decided to move to Canada, where the animals the family owns would also be sold. They board on a Japanese cargo ship with the animals and out of the blue, there is a storm, followed by a shipwrecking. Pi survives in a lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a male Bengal tiger nicknamed Richard Parker. They are adrift in the Pacific Ocean, with aggressive hyena and Richard Parker getting hungry. Pi needs to find a way to survive.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, BrazilAn aspiring Canadian author interviews the Indian storyteller Pi Patel to hear the firsthand account of his adventures. Pi recounts his upbringing in French-occupied India, where his father owned a zoo. When Pi's family business fails, they embark on a sea voyage to Canada to begin a new life. One night aboard their Japanese cargo ship in the middle of the ocean, a violent and deadly storm hits and sinks nearly all that Pi holds dear. He survives in a lifeboat with several of their zoo animals, including a fearsome Bengal tiger. In a struggle to survive, Pi and the tiger forge an unexpected connection that gives him daily motivation to live. Life of Pi is a tale of faith, hope, and the fight to survive.—ahmetkozanA writer, looking for a story idea, is visiting with South Asian-Canadian Pi Patel. They were brought together by Pi's deceased father's longtime friend Francis, who Pi calls Mamaji, who knew Pi's family when they lived in Pondicherry, India, where the writer met Mamaji. Mamaji felt Pi telling the writer his story would be karmic as the writer was a Canadian in French India, and Pi an Indian man in French Canada. Pi proceeds to tell him his life story, which starts in Pondicherry as the son of zookeepers, the zoo property where he grew up: how he was given his full name of Piscine Molitor Patel largely on Mamaji's suggestion which included Mamaji teaching him how to swim, why at age eleven he made a concerted and extraordinary effort to shorten his name to Pi, his concurrent belief in several religions as he was growing up which affected his relationships not only with humans but what he wanted it to be with the animals at the zoo, and his mid-teen burgeoning relationship with a dancer named Anandi just before his family decided to make the move to Canada. But the largest and most fascinating part of his story concerns how he ended up on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific with the zoo's Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, and the progression of their time and understanding of each other during that close connection, Richard Parker to who he attributes his survival despite they being initial adversaries as a human and a wild carnivorous beast.—HuggoIn search of a better future in a new country, after deciding to give up the family zoo in India, Santosh and Gita Patel board a Japanese freighter bound for Canada with their sixteen-year-old son, Pi, his older brother, Ravi, and a few valuable animals. Then, as a violent tempest hammers the vessel, tragedy strikes, and suddenly, Pi finds himself swept away by the furious ocean, aboard an open lifeboat. However, Pi is not alone. With his life hanging by a thread, the young survivor has to share the boat with a spotted hyena, an injured zebra, a female orangutan, and a ferocious Bengal tiger. As the days turn into weeks and the weeks drag into months, Pi must try every trick in the book to keep his justified fears at bay and learn how to coexist with the majestic but menacing animal. Do man and beast stand a chance at survival?—Nick Riganas