The reviewers were rightly impressed with the astonishing brilliance of the story telling. On the front cover Margaret Atwood wrote "It is fresh, original, smart, devious, and crammed with absorbing lore." The Globe and Mail said "Pi"is understated and ironic, utterly believable and pure." What caught my Model Theology interest was the back cover claim that "it may make you believe in God." But that raises a question.
On the one hand there is the name we give to God (Dieu in French,
Allah
in Arabic, Parmeshwar in Hindi, Khuda in Urdu, the Big Bang
for atheists). A quite different question is what we think about his character
(see God of Many Names)
For example in the New Testament the Pharisees and the Galatian Christians
believed in the same Creator God (Elohim in Hebrew, Theos
in Greek) as Paul the Apostle. What went wrong was that they thought God's
love had to be earned by legalism. Pi missed that distinction when in his
distress he prayed to Muhammad (a blasphemous idea for Muslims) who taught
that we only make it to heaven by obeying rules. But Pi got it right when
he was sure that God (by whatever name) loved him regardless of his sinful
behavior.