What is the big hype about Yann Martel anyway?
Life of Pi – his first book – received such a big buzz that, although I was not taken in by the buzz, thought maybe I should try out his latest book.
USA Today quoted “Just might be a masterpiece” on the sleeve.
HUH?!
Seriously??!
What a load of garbage.
There’s nothing close to a masterpiece with this book.
Are we talking about the same book?
Sheesh!
The book is a feeble attempt to be cryptic in storytelling the horrors of Holocaust in a new way which to my opinion, really failed, miserably.
The story centres on Henry – a writer – and an old taxidermist who is in the midst of writing a play. The main characters in the play are a donkey – Beatrice – and a howler monkey – Virgil.
It is from this play that Yann is trying to impart some feeling of fear, sadness, violence and bloodshed related to the Holocaust.
Some of the scenes shared between Henry and the taxidermist are nice and sweet and do invoke some thoughts but many of them are just plain pointless.
The climax of book is like 12 pages away from the end of a 197-pages book where the taxidermist as it turns out is one psycho, murderous nut and ended up burning himself and his shop post stabbing Henry.
What the heck?!
Pointless, pointless, pointless.
I think many of the award-winning writers who obtained acclaim from an earlier book find that they have an upper hand in selling and publicizing future books (i.e. typically non-series books) without even trying hard to write a good book. That one sparkling moment in time sets them up for life.
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