Fallen at the final hurdle

I wrote a little while ago that I try not to judge books until I've finished reading them, as an ending can often make or break a book for me. A little while later I wrote that I was enjoying Life Of Pi, but wasn't prepared to make a recommendation just yet. And then I finished Life Of Pi. This was a book I really loved, right the way through until almost the final chapter. And then I didn't love it anymore. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy it - I did, truely I did. But in the turn of a chapter it went from being a book I would have recommended unreservedly, to a book that a felt decidedly let down by.

The good stuff is pretty much as I said before. The writing was wonderful. I think I've started to appreciate the simple joy of a well turned phrase - of which there are many to be found here. And Pi's determination, spirit and intelligence make for a believable and charming protagonist. His tale is inventive and lovingly researched.

And the bad stuff? Towards the end, the book takes a slightly suprising, almost hallucinatory turn (a plot twist crops up that I remember from Blake's Seven - make of that what you will). This isn't necessarily bad, since it's easily explained by Pi's state of mind at the time, but the end that follows on from it disturbed me. Without trying to give away the ending, all I can really say is that it calls into question the events described in the book, and provides an extremely downbeat alternative explanation. An explanation I found wholly at odds with the entire tone of the book, which until that point could almost have been described as a celebration of human spirit.

Of course, again without trying to give anything away, it's not an explanation we're forced to accept, and indeed it's couched inside a suitably whimsical framing device that it's quite easy to dismiss - but since that's the case, why provide it to begin with? It seems jarringly at odds with the tone of the book until that point, and even with the authors introduction.

Perhaps I'm simply being overly negative (negativity bad! positivity good!), but whereas I'd like to remember the book fondly as a grand adventure, I simply find myself focusing one small part of it. On the other hand, at least the book gave me some food for thought, which is surely a positive thing.

It's always better to question and challenge than blithely accept, isn't it?