I read Life of Pi about eight years ago when it first came out. When I pulled it back off the shelf to write this post, my first thought was where the heck has Yann Martel been. Of course, there are many stories of authors turning out a masterpiece then disappearing. But still. So I googled him. I am not encouraged. His next book is apparently called 20th Century Shirt. It is about a monkey and a donkey. And the setting is on a shirt. Yes, a shirt. But it is a shirt and a country. Oh, and it’s about the Holocaust.

There may be a reason why I can’t find a release date.

Still, it was probably equally challenging to describe his last book before it came out.  “Yeah, so most of it happens on a lifeboat where a man is trapped with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger.”  Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke … or a bad book.

Instead, it was one of the best, most moving books I have read.  The first part of the book is off the boat, looking back at the life of the main character and his detailed descriptions about running a zoo.  But what I remember, what I savored, was the time spent on that boat.  I am fascinated by authors that constrain themselves within the confines of a limited setting or plot or timeframe and then create a novel so expansive that I forget the constraints.  It is something that I strive to do in my own work and something I greatly admire in others.  Martel manages to take his character from the clear-eyed logic of a man who wants to survive the impossible to the madness of a shipwrecked soul barely alive.  And the central conceit — the boat full of wild animals — never seems unreal.

While the lushly written novel should be read slowly and enjoyed, it is the ending that flies by too fast.  Suddenly, thrust into a conversation that reads as quickly as a screenplay, it is easy to trip over yourself getting to the last page … and miss everything.  There is something disconcerting about finishing a book and not understanding what happened.  Even after reading the final pages a few times, I still wasn’t sure.  But it was worse when I realized what I thought the truth was and wished I could go back to it being just a story of a man on a boat with some animals.

Thinking about it now, I’m wondering if maybe Martel can pull off a monkey and a donkey talking about the Holocaust while standing on a shirt.  Or maybe I’ll just read Life of Pi again.