A review by taural41
Life of Pi by Yann Martel

adventurous dark reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

I enjoyed the writing style and the reflective, slow-paced nature of this book. I love a good, slow, character-driven story thick with description and glimpses into characters’ interior lives, so I was expecting to love this book. I did really enjoy it most of the way through but for me the alternative reading of Pi’s journey at sea offered at the end essentially ruined the whole book for me. I am grateful for the reading experience because it helped me learn that I HATE an ambiguous ending, especially one that reveals an unreliable narrator. I enjoy twists in books in other respects, but this one came so late in the story that it just left me feeling like I had been lied to throughout the entire book. Sometimes the last few pages of a book are powerful enough to color my entire experience of reading it, and that was definitely the case for me with this one. I can see why some people love it, but this was very much not for me. In fact, it’s hard to think of a book that I’ve felt more betrayed by. The low star is not reflective of the objective merit of the book, just my experience of reading and really disliking, maybe even hating it. 
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