We are told in the novel's prologue that this is a story that will "make you believe in God." Spirituality does indeed play a major role in the pre-lifeboat segment of the book, but is never fully paid off, even at the novel's end where Pi is being debriefed by Japanese businessmen who owned the boat that Pi's lifeboat came from. There's sort of a twist at the end in which we learn that the amazing story of Pi's survival with the tiger may have been a fabrication he created in order to deal with the trauma of what really happened. It leaves the matter open to the reader to decide what to believe, providing evidence that could go either way.

But, like so much of the book, the revelation seems disjointed. Nothing that happens before it establishes either Pi to be a storyteller or a theme of truth versus fiction or anything to get paid off here that would make it seem like anything more than a twist ending for the sake of a twist ending.

Overall, it was a good read, but after four years of gently hyping it up in my own mind, I was a little disappointed - perhaps more than anything by the fact that the "kid, tiger, lifeboat" story was really anything but. The novel has been showered with awards and there are more than 1,000,000 copies in print, but I think that more than anything it owes its success to that three-word premise so clearly spelled out by the book's jacket art. That is some gorgeous art, by the way.

Lesson learned: book, cover, judge not.

A film adaptation was in the works by M. Night Shyamalan, but that got scrapped. Then there was one by Alfonso Cuaron, but he too moved on. Jean-Pierre Jeunet is now the man in charge of the adaptation. I would have loved to have seen Cuaron's version, because I know he would have played the fantastic stuff very straight and very dark. I also really wish Night had stuck around, too, because his would have been the "kid, tiger, lifeboat" story I had so hoped the book would be. But if anyone can pull off the richness and bizarreness of this novel with full cinematic gusto, it would be the French.

A side note: I'll bet you anything that in 20 years or so, Life of Pi will be required reading in high schools all across the country.