Book Look: Life of Pi

I'm 32 pages into Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It's called "a novel," in the "fiction" section, but it's presented as based on a true story and as the closest the author could possibly get to what actually happened. So far, it's unique and promising. It's written from a character's first-person view, but not in a normal fictional narrative. It is more like an autobiography or memoirs, giving the impression of an older person looking back on his life explaining things that affected it---an "uncle" that taught him to swim, memories of the zoo his father owned, humurous little anecdotes---hardly a novel in its conventional sense.

Pages 15-19 could stand alone as a short essay about the misconception that animals don't like living in zoos and would rather be out in the wild, where it's better and more natural for them. It's a very convincing argument, too:

"In a zoo, we do for animals what we have done for ourselves with houses: we bring together in a small space what in the wild is spread out... A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely. A sound zoo enclosure is the equivalent for an animal... Such an enclosure is subjectively neither better nor worse for an animal than its condition in the wild; so long as it fulfills the animal's needs, a territory, natural or constructed, simply is, without judgment, a given, like the spot on a leopard..."

Interesting stuff. I just hope it doesn't get too bogged down with essay-like tangents and sticks with the main story. That's why I couldn't finish Moby Dick. I don't care about how many species of whales are and what their differences are! I want to see them hunt the whale! But so far, the tangents in Life of Pi are both interesting and relatory, and I believe I am about to get to the main part of the story.

Edmond the Hun