Life of Pi Book Review

 I had heard of this book as you do when a book is a best seller and an Oprah's Book Club selection, like flies buzzing in your ears every now and then.  You try to ignore it and bat those pecky flies away.  I have better things to read,  I thought  like book after book that is set in Victorian England in the same time period with the same sort of characters.  So I had fallen into a bit of a reading slump.   And I decided to take a chance on a different sort of book.  

 

Life of Pi by Yann Martel begins in Pondicherry India and introduces us to a little boy named Piscine Molitar Patel.  Named after a French swimming pool he tormented by his classmates who call him Pissing.  He eventually insists on going by just Pi.  I formed an instant kinship with him as only someone with a last name that rhymed with Pooper can.  

 When political unrest comes to India Pi's mother and father decide to move the family to Canada.  The boat they are on shipwrecks in the Pacific Ocean.  From there the story becomes one of desperate survival, harrowing experiences and a lesson in faith and love of God.  

I equal parts loved and hated this book.  It reminded me of my experience reading The Kite Runner.  Maybe it's the sign of a good book when you can't decide if you've just read the most depressing book in the world or the most inspiring.  Life of Pi spares it's readers none of the awful and horrible details of surviving a shipwreck and floating on an ocean for months.  It's also faith promoting and a triumph and testament to the capabilities of the human spirit and the divine within all of us.  It's what life is.  Light and shadows.  Darkest night and dazzling day.  I can and probably will continue to indulge my reading taste for stories that contain romance and true love and happy endings, but they don't really make me think.  There is a lot of symbolism in this book and is a bit of a parable for the underlying story.  

 

A word to the wise.  This is not a true story.  I read the entire 319 pages loving and pitying Pi Patel as a real person.  The author sets this book up as if this is a true story and he has spent time with Pi and researched his story.  Can you blame me for believing him?  As one book review I read put it..."You have to be incredibly naive to believe that as the story unfolds that any of the events could possibly be true."  I have been called naive before and it's probably not the last time.  I think this book would be a great book club selection to read and discuss with others.  When I finished this book I immediately wanted to call my brother and tell him to read it so we could discuss.  

P.S. I love the picture of the slogan used in Britain in WWII.  The message of this book is not far from this.

The Last First Kiss

I have an odd appreciation for sidewalks.  I think it's because the town I grew up in had so few of them.   The sidewalks in the city are the best because they are the busiest.  I love people watching.  Wondering what kind of food a person likes or what type of person they are attracted to.  I often make up little biographies about complete strangers as I observe them.  I was walking with Ava the other evening.  I love summer evenings.  The warm night air, the beautiful light as the sun goes down.  We decided to take a shortcut from Harvard Avenue through our ward's beautiful grounds.  The Garden Park Ward church house is like nothing I've witnessed before, but the grounds are what make it special. 

  

There is a stream that runs through the grounds.  And a duck pond where two ducks reside.  Our first Sunday here one of the sweet older sisters in our ward insisted that we take Ava out to see the ducks.  Ava loves quacking at the ducks and on week days we often bring old bread to feed them.  Anyway back to the story.  So we were walking down Harvard Avenue and decided to cut through the grounds.  There is a brick wall that surrounds the grounds...

...See.  As we entered through the gate I nearly tripped over Ava as she bent down to pick up a leaf.  I never would have saw them if I hadn't have stopped so abruptly.  I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and I quickly turned my head and there between the brick wall and some shrubs was a very amorous couple.  I starred for just a moment out of surprise and then told Ava to get a move on.  I stopped by the duck pond and saw the couple leaving though the gate hand in hand.  She had black hair and red lipstick and was curvier.  He was tall and lanky and I imagined he preferred the curvier girls and in my mind I applauded him.  I imagined they'd been dating a few months and were hopelessly in love.  They would stroll out the garden gate and walk down the street lamp lighted dusk towards his car.  They were headed for an ice cream shop.  I told you I make up stories for people.  As they were leaving, for just a moment I felt a surge of envy.

I've been married for nearly 7 years.  It's not even a blink of an eye in the scheme of things, I realize that.  There are many things that are so comfortable about knowing and loving someone day in and day out.  And there are many things that are not so comfortable.  I often wonder if I'm just a restless soul.  That after 7 years I'd stop mourning the slow disintegration of that spark of first love that burns so hot at the beginning of a relationship that slowly settles into a more even keeled every day love.  I partly blame society for it's glorification of the intense experience of falling in love with a person to the exclusion of all other stages of love.  And I partly blame myself for obsessively reading Victorian romance novels, crying over Disney movies, and watching Father of the Bride 123,000 times.  To say I had high expectations for love and marriage is a big understatement.  

 

Scientists have actually done studies on how long that first falling in love stage lasts and it's effect on the brain.  It turns out that type of love usually lasts 2 years at the max and the feelings and the chemicals they release actually act like a drug in your brain.  How do you stop missing that first kiss when all the memories you have of it are tied into that euphoric feeling so intoxicating to the system?  Sigh.  Can you blame me for giving that couple making out behind the brick wall an envious glare?  I admit making out on the grounds of a church house is a little odd, but the first time I walked around them I imagined myself in a Scarlett O'Hara ball gown snuggled up to Rhett Butler beneath the willow tree.  I know, stop with the period romances already...curse you Jane Austen! 

I'm not trying to bash long lasting love.  It's really the glue that keeps the wheels a churning in a family.  And the truth is I know and love my husband so much more today after going through trials and joys together than I did the day we were married.  But...I still miss it.  I still miss finding out about each other.  I miss those first tentative kisses.  I miss feeling on the cusp of a great adventure.  I've been thinking about it since that night and I've debated on taking Brig back to the garden wall and stealing a few kisses of my own.  But it would be rather embarrassing to have our Bishop discover us fawning over each other like common teenagers!  Does anyone else miss those first years together?  Or is it just me?