I always enjoy Yann Martel's writing and appreciate his creativity and symbolism - that said, I feel Self is in a class of its own; intelligently awkward, boldly candid, and beautifully empathetic.

As with any coming of age story, we follow our main character through his/her journey, all the while reflecting on our own past experiences. Drawing parallels, relating, and reliving memories or feelings left behind.

I struggled a little with my thoughts on this one... Having grown up myself in a French Canadian household yet completely immersed in English-speaking surroundings, I understand all too well the duality of conflicting cultures and identities, the balancing act, and the figuring out.

Perhaps because it hit so close to home made it difficult for me to truly let go and separate the mind from the heart, the reality from the fiction... Still, the life of a chameleon is one to embrace - with Self, Martel proves to be a multilayered storyteller and point of view master.

I guess this book maybe falls in the “ love it or hate it” category. I read it for my book club and I was encouraged because Yann Martel wrote “Life of Pi”, which proves that he’s capable of good writing. This is his first book so I’ll give him a pass and maybe try another. If you haven’t read this, I suggest you move past it to “Life of Pi”.

It may lack the depth of Life of Pi, but there's no denying the fact that Self has an aura of its own.
A vivid, sometimes playful account of growing up written on a stretch.
A story of sexuality, gender and morphosis written so candidly that Martel hardly seems to miss a detail.
Some may wrongly interpret it as erotic literature and why shouldn't they?
Martel is too bold in describing the various sexual acts.
But keep your judging mind aside and you may get the real theme.

The best part of the book is the one with the narrator's childhood.
Seeing things through the curious innocent eyes of a pre-teen.
The experience of forgetting everything and looking at things anew, questioning things you thought you knew answers to.
A child's sarcasm on the weird ways of the world.
'Gender in case of love struck me as of no greater consequence than flavors in case of ice cream.'

While some of it is truly heart touching, some of it just went sailing over my head. Why did the author make some things so far-fetched? Why did it end the way it did? What does that mean?
Martel takes us through the life of a 'person' who stays anonymous till the end. And not only the name but also the gender.
A teenager, a philosophical young adult, a writer, a traveler, a student, a lover, but what? A man or a woman?
Maybe both.
Maybe none.
Maybe a hermaphrodite.
Or maybe that doesn't matter.
Yes that's it.
Look at the way its written.
The gender fluctuations, the morphosis takes place so casually.
Man till 18, woman thereafter.
And moreover no questions, no fuss.
Everything accepted with a smile.
This may baffle you.
But that's what Martel wants to say after all.
Why are we so obsessed with the protagonist's gender?
In the course of reading the book, you form a connection with the narrator.
You know him inside-out.
But are we so narrow minded that we'll let gender or more correctly it's ambiguity make the narrator a complete stranger?
Gender is a trivial thing in understanding a person's being.
I think that's what the author wants to say.

All in all, a good read.

Y Martel does have a curious imagination and the premise for this story is good. There are parts, though, that were just "too much information".

I'd read 'Life of Pi' a few years ago, so when this book came to me as a birthday gift I was excited to read another book by Yann Martel. It took me a few pages to get used to the writing style presented here - a mix of flashbacks and future shots and short bits that didn't make much sense at the moment. After the first 20 pages or so, I could barely put it down and fell in love with the style. A great book, though some of the events are a bit mystifying and other ones downright tragic and heart-wrenching. I plan to re-read it as I feel I've missed some things that turned out to be important later.

Made me laugh, giggle, smile, turned me on, made me horny, gave me erections; made me sad, thoughtful, still - a gentle rollercoaster, with a concept as it's engine. Fuck me I loved it. Every page, every sentence. Should you read it? If you loved Life of Pi, yes. I read this after reading Virgil and Beatrice and High Mountains of Portugal (i am on a yann martel marathon hahaha) and this book is the closest to Life of Pi in style. At least, that's what I can say, but, hey, don't trust me, I read Life of Pi 12 years ago hahah.

I will end my review with my fave quote from the book, "Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly."

Holy shit. Wow.

So I get that Yann Martel wrote this a few years before he wrote Life of Pi, but I did read Life of Pi first, so in my mind Life of Pi always goes first. Let's just say it kind of ruined its innocence for me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not comparing it to Life of Pi. But I just can't comprehend the fact that the person who wrote Life of Pi is the same person who wrote this.

I definitely wouldn't recommend this to the weak-willed and weak-stomached. Lots of sex scenes, some animal abuse, bullying, so if you're sensitive about that stuff, this book is not for you. That rape scene at the end was horrible and it made me sad, knowing that this does happen to innocent women (and men) everywhere. I was very sympathetic with the narrator, and the way Yann Martel wrote it, as I read I felt like I was the one experiencing the agony the narrator was going through.

This novel had so much potential. The gender issues were fascinating, but almost everything else was not: the lists of every course taken during a semester but never any insights gained from the courses, list of places traveled without any description of the trip (yes a few trips were described but why say where the protagonist traveled with Tito, with Cathy, in one sentence, and that's it, what's the point?), a paragraph-long list of authors who influenced the main character (who was that supposed to impress?), etc. The childhood was well done but it seems Martel got winded by the middle of the novel. Still, gender issues were fascinating, especially the disturbing ending.

Although I found this book very intriguing, in my opinion it occasionally took things too far at times.

Written as a fictional autobiography, Self follows the life of a a young Canadian man. Thoroughly investigating the roles of gender and bias, I really did at times find myself fighting my own inner dialogue.

My favourite thing about this book are the eye fish:

“The clear liquid in our eyes is seawater and therefore there are fish in our eyes, seawater being the natural medium of fish. Since blue and green are the colours of the richest seawater, blue and green eyes are the fishiest. Dark eyes are somewhat less fecund and albino eyes are nearly fishless, sadly so. But the quantity of fish in an eye means nothing. A single tigerfish can be as beautiful, as powerful, as an entire school of seafaring tuna. That science has never observed ocular fish does nothing to refute my theory; on the contrary, it emphasizes the key hypothesis, which is: love is the food of eye fish and only love will bring them out. So to look closely into someone's eyes with cold, empirical interest is like the rude tap-tap of a finder on an aquarium, which only makes the fish flee. In a similar vein, when I took to looking at myself closely in mirrors during the turmoil of adolescence, the fact that I saw nothing in my eyes, not even the smallest guppy or tadpole, said something about my unhappiness and lack of faith in myself at the time."

This book as given to me by a friend who claimed it one of his favourites. Although thought provoking, it is not one of mine.

I loved this book from the very first page. Starting off simply as a well written and engaging autobiography, Self soon takes a beautiful and unexpected turn to become so much more. Blending reality seamlessly with fiction, Self is smart, gut wrenching, and wonderfully written. Yann Martel's talent in voice and empathy are clearly what makes this so marvelous, and left me shocked and grieving after I finished it. He plays with style, language, identity, desolation and gender with devastating effect. I will be recommending this book to everyone and won't be getting over it any time soon.

As is typical of most Canadian fiction, this is a strange strange book. Yet it intrigued me and kept me reading. For that, I am appreciative. Would I recommend it? The jury is still out on that one.

For the first five-sixths of this novel I was thinking, "Ohmigod this is the platonic ideal for novels. This is hands down the best book I have ever read." It's a faux-memoir about a person who magically and for no apparent reason fluctuates between gender, which is bizarre yet totally fascinating, and the language and storytelling are utter rhapsody.

And then, at the five-sixths point the WORST POSSIBLE THING HAPPENED: It turned into a concrete poem. About rape. Yann Martel, why did you do it?? It was going so well, and then you wrecked it with the lamest trick in the entire Western canon + modern literary pretense + ugh.

So, if you read it, maybe don't read all the way to the end.