Life of Pi, de Yann Martel

J'ai lu "Life of Pi" de Yann Martel.

Quatrième de couverture : Pi Patel, a God-loving boy and the son of a zookeeper, has a fervent love of stories and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family and their zoo animals emigrate from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship. Alas, the ship sinks - and Pi finds himself in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi. Can Pi and the tiger find their way to land? Can Pi's fear, knowledge, and cunning keep him alive until they do?

I heard about the book because of the movie they made of it. It was a while ago, and I never watched it but I almost bought the book. At the last minute, I decided against it for various reasons (I was a bit afraid that the book would be boring)

I'm glad I didn't bought it because I found it a couple days ago in my public library, in english ! And I'm very found of reading in english.

It didn't take me a long time to finish this book, since I have holidays and that means a lot of spare time. The book wasn't at all boring, apart from a small part of the castaway life that the narrator tells us about : when he gives up on hope and has nothing else on his mind apart from finding ways to eat and drink. But that was to be expected in such a story, and the author managed to keep things interesting.

Pi Patel has a strong faith in God and is very innocent, candid. I really liked this character, the way he tries to stay optimistic and never gives up on life. The other thing that I liked a lot was the fact that he has to live with a tiger in a very confided space : a lifeboat.

The relationship between those two main protagonists is very interesting and evolves through the story, it goes from fear to love as Pi decides to take his fate in hand (either he doesn't do anything about this problem and might end up eaten by a tiger, or he tries to show him how the "alpha animal" is, and establishes a certain safety)

I enjoyed the reading of this book, and I think I'll try to see the movie soon ! I prefer doing things in this order : reading first, and then watching the movie if there is one.