I went to dinner with a friend in August of 2002. He handed me a paperback book. On the jacket was the picture of a boy and a tiger in a boat on the sea. “Read this,” my friend said. “It’s tough getting through the first part. It’s long. Slow and tedious. Then it all changes. It’s the best ending I’ve ever read.”

The book sat on my desk for months. Finally I picked it up and began. Paragraph by paragraph I ground through the first 93 pages. Background. Data. Information. I’d read half a page, maybe a full page, then I’d put the book down.

Finally I got to Section Two. Everything changed.

I couldn't put down the same book that before I could barely pick up. When Pi Patel turns sixteen, his zookeeper family and their zoo animals travel from India to the North American continent on a cargo ship. The ship sinks. Pi ends up stranded on a raft – with a tiger. The story is about exactly what the jacket artwork says: a boy and a tiger in a boat on the sea.

Or is it?

In a few paragraphs, Martel changes the way you see the entire story and maybe life. For days after finishing the book I kept returning to it, reading bits over and again. I saw why the beginning had to be what it was. It was more than background. It was story. And now I didn’t want the experience of the Life of Pi – from the first word to the last -- to end. Without a doubt, this is the most skillfully crafted book and the best ending I’ve ever read.