LIFE OF PI - Part 3

What to make of this ending?  You'll have to decide for yourself.  There's strong elements of magical realism in this book, it's hard to know what's "real" - the carnivorous island inhabited by meerkats?  the strange fruit containing human teeth?  Pi and Richard Parker discussing their fantasy favorite foods?  the encounter with another lifeboat and another castaway in the middle of the ocean?  In the end, if we ask  "what is real here?"  then,  as the ficticious writer of Pi's story tells us in his introduction, speaking of something entirely different,  "... we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams."

This book is exactly like a very worthwhile dream, a long dream from which you are reluctant to wake up, for although awful, it's the most interesting dream you've ever had.  The writing is quirky and often amusing, often soaring in its description of the ocean and the life within it.  Storms and whales, sharks and flying fish, skies, suns, moons - this description of a lightning strike:  "The water was shot through with what looked like white roots; briefly, a great celestial tree stood in the ocean."  This moment, so vast and fantastic, leaves Pi with this meditation:  "At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far."  A good quote to end upon, because it pretty much sums up the way I feel about this novel.  Not a bit of small thinking about it.