I really enjoyed reading Yann Martel’s very popular book. I don’t read much fiction which means I almost always enjoy it, but this was particularly satisfying in a way that Pi himself would understand.

The story is just out of reach of normality but not so far that it ever becomes really implausible. As a scientist (it’s my religion rather than my profession per se) I quickly become uncomfortable without reasonable argument to justify changes to the universe. Martel’s fine-grained world carries plenty of that, viewed through Pi’s steady observations. A lot of people might have found it a bit of a slog, with the fairly meticulous descriptions of which parts of a turtle are edible and the habits of animals both in zoos and the wild, but I loved sharing the wonder that Pi finds in everything nature offers him. In addition all the momentum of Pi’s rich world, gathered through the book, is spent marvelously well in the last fifty pages, more than justifying any earlier wanderings.