In the last two books I’ve read, God or faith was either the underlying current or the main theme of the story. This surprised me a little but it should not in retrospect. There are few subjects as easily expandable as faith and love. And it makes it easy fodder to incorporate into a story because it stretches like clay and molds itself into any story. Perhaps the prevalence of faith in these last two stories was so striking to me because I have just come out of my "all improbable love" focus of the Twilight series (suffocating nonsense that does no one a good end but I digress). Let’s get on to them…
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
I read this book a long time ago as a child. One thing I can say about this book is that it is one of the first books I can remember loving. I remember being so excited about sharing new plot points with my mother and digging through the dictionary to learn all the new words (tesseract!) I found.
I loved it then and I still love it now. I cannot accurately transcribe why I love it so much (e.g. hope, self-awareness, despair, triumph, belief, victory) but I do. Funny, but when something is close to me, I have trouble explaining why it’s so close. Probably because it requires no explanation for me, it just is. The things you hold closest to you probably cannot be explained with tangible reasons. When you try to explain it in words the world can understand, it always robs the connection or cheapens it. That’s probably why I can never do Wuthering Heights the justice its review deserves. I’ve read it too many times to be objective.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
I didn’t like this book for 87/100 parts of the book but the 99th part saved it and made the read worth it in the end. This book had a good reputation but I purchased it mainly because of vanity. I needed a grown-up book to buy along with the purchase of the third Twilight book. I needed something mature to go along with my teen obsession.
The title alludes to a long, almost never-ending journey since pi, of course, is a never-ending number. It could be an allegory since our life is a never-ending journey. For most of us who believe in life after death, this is especially true.
The beginning started off interestingly enough. A multi-theist boy who loves God and seeks God in all the many ways we try to reach Him while here on Earth. But somewhere between the family’s trip from India to Canada, tedium set in and set in quickly. Chapters went by without comprehension because of the intricate attention to detail that only seemed to be put there to fill space on the page. It was not poorly written detail but it was not something an average reader could understand as being important or integral to the story. It almost seemed like the author had finished the story, realized it was too short, and went back and added copious amounts of details about the minutiae of the boy’s day. But perhaps it was not an afterthought. Perhaps the slow build-up and the lessons in patience in reading through the tedium were necessary to fully appreciate the moving ending.
Life of Pi is catalogued as a metaphysical novel. I think it missed the mark there. I am not that experienced in the genre; but, what I do know (which is strictly Paulo Coehlo books), disqualifies this as metaphysical. Metaphysical novels should move you beyond what you can physically see or comprehend. It is something that moves you in an intimate way, alters the course of your thought/emotional/spiritual pattern or at least makes you question it. This book is moving and it did arise questions. But the questions were only concerned with trying to interpret the message the author wanted to reveal. The message I discovered was important but it did not move me past the initial point of the illumination.
It is a wonderful story that makes you think about God and the relationship God has with you. And for that reason only, it made the novel (with its tedium) worthwhile and a welcome surprise.
