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** spoiler alert ** "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel is a beautiful and page-turning story, a parable of universal dimensions, and the ultimate tall tale.

The novel launches into it's gripping and eye-popping narrative so earnestly and matter-of-factly that it's only well into the book that the accumulation of incredibility starts you looking out warily for some deeper level down below - and only in the last few pages that the whole truth emerges. There were two stories all along, and the second one was a lot more believable but also a lot more horrible than the first.

It's a monumental amalgamation of fact and fiction that ends up bringing the very the importance - if not the existence itself - of "fact" and "fiction" into question in the most existential of ways. (Even the biographical preface describing how Martel stumbled across the story for his book is a cunning fusion of fantasy and reality, teasing the question of whether any of the parallels between the two stories to come apply here - in the author's life - too.) Yes, this is all funneled into a very specific conclusion about religion in the end (which I'll decline to comment on here), but the whirlwind of ideas that is the rest of the book remains, and it's a magical and an earthshaking one.

The tale is told in a fittingly quirky and playful style that's just right for distilling huge themes, and Martel has what it takes to turn the act of killing a fish or the discovery of a botanically freakish island into intensely emotional moments.

✍️ Quote of the Book: "That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?"