Blooming Marvelous!

A good friend recommended *The Life of Pi* to me with "Well it's about a teenager who was named after a swimming pool who finds himself stranded on a life-boat with a hungry tiger..." It definately did NOT sound like something I wanted to read. Then she lent me a copy of the book. After ten pages I was hooked.

She should have added "it's also about God, Religion, Ethics, and Humanity's Place in the Universe".

It also tells you how to survive being stranded on a life-boat with a Bengal Tiger.

My only quarrel with the book is the last few chapters ....edited to remove plot spoiler..... Trying to put a Freudian twist on the situation is really lame.

Be warned: this book is not for everyone. If you believe every word in the New Testament, then leave it alone (the orthodox gospels take a heck of a beating here).
But if you want an extremely funny book that makes you think about how difficult it must have been to be a Messiah, this is the novel for you. I'd like to think that Jesus was lucky enough to have had a friend like Biff - well-intentioned, if slightly dim, fallible, but loyal to a fault. I picture Levi, who is called Biff, as a good-hearted frat boy, the kind that's a little too fond of lame pratical jokes, and is always mooning over some unobtainable cheer-leader (Mary Magdalen, in this case, and she comes across as one smart cookie) but always comes through for his buddies.
Some of the jokes are moronic, but hey, that's Biff, not Jesus. Some of them are subtle theological references, and many are laugh-yourself-sick brilliant.
This book also explains some puzzling religious mysteries, like why Jews go out for Chinese food on Christmas, and why there is an Easter Bunny (I guarantee you're never going to look on the wedding at Cana the same way again).
Lend this book to your best friend - the Unitarian with a sense of humor - but keep it out of the hands of sweet aunt Ethel, who sends money to the 700 club.

Better than average, but not great.
I have to admit that I'm a sucker for puzzles. Present me with one of those logic problems ("John lives in the blue house. The owner of the lamborgini lives next the guy with the iguana..") and I'll stay out of trouble for a long time.
That's over half the fun in this book. Of course a well-educated reader can figure out the clues several pages ahead of the protagonists; I spent the last third of the novel wanting to scream at the hero "Wake up, you dummy! The answer to the second riddle is freaking *obvious*! Does it have to hit you on the head?" Also, the name of one of the main characters is an absolute plot-spoiler for anyone with an elementary knowlege of European theology.
It reminds me a lot of Catherine Neville's novel *The Eight* - another cliff-hanger that takes the reader through a romp with history and cryptology. If you want a serious book on these themes, check out Neal Stephenson's *Cryptonomicon*.
Cardboard characters? Sure, but so is the guy with the iguana.
I thought *The Da Vinci Code* was delicious brain candy.
I thought this