'Life of Pi' is Weird Form of Mystery

Review of LIFE OF PI (Highbridge Audio 2003)
By guest blogger Star Lawrence
Author, Yann Martel; read by Jeff Woodman with Alexander Marshall

LIFE OF PI is not a who-dunnit, but a did-it-happen. I am way behind the power curve on this one—people recommended it to me way back when I could read books with pages. Silly me, I judged by the cover—a folk art pic of a tiger in a rowboat. Maybe not, I kept thinking haughtily, eyes sliding to the next book on the shelf.

Finally, I got LIFE OF PI on CD—even then it sat alone on my dresser—all the other tapes came first.

Boy, was I a dope. Pi is not the mathematical constant, but a 16-year-old Indian lad’s first name (he’s named after a swimming pool, as he will tell you in the somewhat sleepy introduction to this adventure—bear with it, it’s worth it). His dad is a zookeeper and the family moves from Pondicherry to Montreal, sailing with some animals that have been sold to zoos in Canada and America.

A storm arises, and Pi can’t sleep and goes on deck. What happens next—well, that’s the mystery. He ends up in a lifeboat with some of the animals, including a 450-lb Bengal tiger, a hyena, an orangutan, a rat and a zebra.

No, this isn’t some cheesy Noah riff. The hyena attacks the zebra and tears off chunks. Pi is afraid of the tiger and suspends himself on an oar sticking out of the bow to stay safe. At this point, the ship gurgles beneath the ocean.

Pi is at sea with the tiger for seven months—or was he? How does he survive? Can he intimidate the beast enough to live? They finally come to a weirdly undulating island made of delicious algae and swarming with meerkats. But I will leave that part for your delectation.

In an Epilogue, officials of the Japanese shipping company approach Pi and ask what happened. He tells them what we already know. They don’t buy it. Okey-dokey. He tells them another story, weirdly paralleling the first. Is this the truth?

Or is a tiger roaming the jungles of Mexico?

Your call.

Star Lawrence is a writer in Chandler, AZ, and can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com. She's a frequent contributor to The Book Grrl and authors the blog Do the Hopey Copey, a humorous how-to guide to handling the recession.

Moody little Moon, Singleton Hippie Art

Moody Little Moon(C) Singleton"Hovering...Hanging out on top of my world,loitering,lounging,listening.....The many faces of the night changing...."Colored markers, pencils, ink on Cardstock.... Sometimes peace is found in the midst of chaos....And sometimes you just have to be a hippie to believe....Listening, waiting for les frivolites to answer....I believe....in peace and love and people....

The Story of a 'Restless' Spirit

RESTLESS (Bloomsbury USA 2007)
Author, William Boyd

Literary spy thrillers have become a new favorite genre of mine. RESTLESS by William Boyd is about as literary as they come. The writing has a certain lyrical rhythm to it, the sentences running long, strung together by commas, sort of like this one only longer. And Boyd loves to use words that evoke marvelous imagery, likes description such as that of a manor house "falling down, on its last woodwormed legs, giving up its parched ghost to entropy. Sagging tarpaulins covered the roof of the east wing, rusting scaffolding spoke of previous vain gestures at restoration and the soft yellow Cotswold stone of its walls came away in your hand like wet toast."

See what I mean?

In the "interminable hot summer of 1976, that summer when England reeled, gasping for breath, pole-axed by the unending heat," our protagonist, single mom Ruth Gilmartin, finds out that her mother isn't Sally Gilmartin of London at all, but a Russian emigre named Eva Delectorskaya (try saying that ten times fast). Eva was recruited by the British Secret Service in 1939, after her brother died working for them. Eva's brought into the intelligence fold by a mysterious man named Lucas Romer--a "swarthy" man "with dense eyebrows, uncurved,like two black horizontal dashes beneath his high forehead and above his eyes," who also has "very white, even teeth," which he occasionally bares in an intriguing smile.

Ruth's mother tells her about this. But not all at once. She spoons out the story one chapter at a time. And, in between, we get a chapter from Ruth's life. Needless to say, Ruth has a hard time believing any of this at first. She's got enough on her hands trying to raise her son, Jochen, without benefit of a partner, while working as an English tutor for foreign students attending Oxford University. And then other complications ensue. Ruth doesn't want to have to deal with her Mum going all dotty on her.

But Mum's not dotty. She's right as rain and this spy story is the truth (stranger than fiction, as they say). She continues to provide Ruth one chapter at a time--in order to work out the story's imperfections, she says--but of course it's a writer's trick. It's just Boyd saying, "Wait for it . . ."

And as each woman's tale unfolds, they eventually find past and present coming together. Ruth ends up getting pulled into her mother's narrative, so to speak, though for the most part they have separate stories, that run in interesting parallel ways.

Regardless of how you feel about lengthy sentences, rich with description, a great yarn (or two, really) awaits you along with them in this book.

Ruth is also a likeable character, whether she's kidding with her son or cursing out a patronizing man. She's full of keen, funny observations and she has an interesting life, though quite different from her mother's. Her mother's is just amazing. And, even if Ruth is technically the protagonist (I'd say she is--her part is in first person and Eva's is in third, thus letting the reader identify more with Ruth), her mother's story is nonetheless the main event.

And, of course, as there always are in spy thrillers, there's a big twist. I saw it coming the moment it was set up (I'm not sure whether being a writer myself or a voracious reader is to blame), but that was okay. The question then became when will the twist happen, how and (more to the point) why?

Those questions were answered satisfactorily enough for me, and being a spy novel there was enough double-cross and triple-cross action to make your head spin trying to follow it completely. And, again, that's fine. Because, along with the story, which hums along to its fitting conclusion, there's this overlying theme of questioning how well we know those closest to us. Plus an exploration of the mindset necessary to survive playing spy games. Which, in a word, is: restless.

Online Book Recommendations

Here's an interesting new search engine to try. A site that will recommend books based on the author and title you type in.

I tried searching on "Walter Mosley" and it asked (Google-like) if I meant DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS by that author. I said, sure--why not? Hit return. And got some interesting results.

HITMAN: A STANLEY HASTINGS MYSTERY by Parnell Hall--that I can understand. But HANS SOLO'S REVENGE and STAR TREK - SAREK? Not sure where those came from.

Farther down , it says, "To get more accurate suggestions, add more books you've loved to your list - to do this you'll need to register." Ah, there's the catch.

Think I'll just keep choosing books the old fashioned way. Learn about them and decide for myself.

'Ready For Love' Faerie Skirt

A Whimsical Parade of hand-me-down chokersand midnight bets,Spitting out sweet reminders...Stuffed,Tucked ,Crammed,Shoved,Smooshed,Packed,Wedged.Waiting...I know...that I really don't knoweverything that there is to know...Traipsing away from a field of free wishes,losing sight and sound and along the way,losing all the fears that keep so many tethered hereFreeSpinning, weaving, sewing threads of

Catching Up on News

I saw recently that James Purdy died. His writing is described as "darkly comic." As I read this, I became intrigued. I've never read his stuff, but have made a mental note to add him to my TBR list. (When Gore Vidal calls someone an "authentic American genius," that gets my attention.)

And, on the dark side, had to post about Hard Case Crime's 50th release titled FIFTY-TO-ONE. No one does it like Hard Case Crime or Charles Ardai. Well--more accurately--they used to do it, and Ardai is doing it again. :) Really well, at that.

And check out this list of book blogs. At least one of these (BookSlut) simply must go on my blogroll and I'll have to consider adding the rest. Swear I'll get 'round to that soon. (Thanks to Anne Wayman of About Freelance Writing for these.)

Parker Runs Through the 'Slayground'

Review of SLAYGROUND (Random 1971)
Author, Richard Stark

The late Donald Westlake is another one of those authors who's been praised to skies (especially after his death) and whose work I've been meaning to check out--again.

I can't remember which Westlake book it was that I tried first--something with Dortmunder in it, I think. It had to be Dortmunder because that was his comic character and Westlake was trying so hard to be funny. Ha ha, I said, and put the book down without finishing it.

Then I read all those glowing post-mortems on Westlake's career. I wondered, "Is it me? Maybe I should try another one."

I saw from the retrospectives that Westlake wrote under no less than three names. (Wow, I thought. It's hard enough just to write under one. And, if you read Wikipedia, it'll tell you he used many more.) And, under the name Richard Stark, he wrote about a hard-edged anti-hero, a cynical robber named Parker. And one Parker novel drew this blurb from Anthony Boucher: "Nobody tops Stark in his portayals of a world of total amorality." Wow, Anthony Boucher said that? I'm in.

SLAYGROUND starts with an armored-car robbery gone wrong. The getaway car in which Parker and his two cohorts flee the scene gets into a terrible crash. Parker grabs the cash and leaves the cohorts to their own devices. He runs for the nearest hiding place he can find--an amusement park called Fun Island. (Can you feel the irony yet? Don't worry, you will.) As he climbs the gate with the cash, he notices two men in hats and dark overcoats (it's winter and the park's closed) with two uniformed policemen--out there in the middle of nowhere. One of the cops is holding a long white envelope. And we all know what that means--it's not a love letter inside that envelope, it's cash, and that means that the cops are being bought and that means that the men in hats and overcoats are "wise guys." The Mob. And they notice Parker noticing them.

Parker realizes he's in big trouble when he finds out there's no other way out of the park. He can't go out the gate, because then the bad guys will nab him. So he knows they'll eventually be coming in for him. And he gets ready for this. He runs from one section of the park to the other--from New York Island to Alcatraz to Treasure Island and Voodoo Island and so on and so on--setting up traps (it doesn't say so, but it's pretty obvious that's what he's doing) in the funhouse the various boat rides and the submarine ride and so on and so on. And his circuit of the park is described in "over the river and through the woods" detail from about page 15 to about page 38, at which point, it's night and Parker is waiting and wondering why those guys haven't come after him yet. And I'm thinking bo-o-o-ring and I'm almost ready to put the book down. But I always give a book 50 pages. And the next 12 pages made all the difference.

That's when you get to meet the bad guys--the two cops and the two hoods--each of them interesting characters. You get to find out about each of their agendas and why they waited so long to come in. Once they're inside--let in by a hapless night watchman who ends up tied up, blindfolded and gagged in the watchhouse--all the fun starts. It starts with a bang and things seem to go well for Parker at first. But then things take a turn. And Parker suddenly finds himself in deep doo-doo.

The rest of the book is Parker versus the bad guys. Parker's movements continue to be described in great detail ("over the bridge, past the tiki hut, into the blacklight ride . . ."). I think the description is supposed to reflect the cold nature of his character--his sheer calculation--because Parker really hasn't much personality to speak of. Or maybe it was just the author's style. I don't know. Anyway, Parker is so thoroughly a man of strategy and action, without those attributes he'd be as colorless as the invisible man.

Yet, oddly, I got used to the cadence of description and the level of detail as Parker plays cat-and-mouse with the Mob. I got so caught up in the suspense, I stayed up late reading because I simply had to finish the section (the book's divided into four) that I'd started.

So did this book work for me? Well, yes. It was exciting, well-written, escapist fun. (I did blow through the description a bit, but still . . . I liked the story.) Would I agree with Boucher's assessment? Well, Boucher wrote it in 1966--before The Sopranos, The Wire and all sorts of other tales of amoral folk. I suppose, for its time, this was pretty harsh stuff. Nothing about the people in this book particularly shocked me in the amorality department, but it's not 1966 anymore, is it?

The book ends on a note that practically begs for a sequel. And there is the small matter of the hapless watchman. I wonder what happened to him?