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Montreal writer Yann Martel has an abiding fascination with the fabulous. In his narratives - rather adventurous, philosophical tales with a clearly Canadian bent - nothing is quite as it seems. The narrator of the title story of his debut collection, The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (1993), recounts a number of fanciful, fact-based stories to a man dying of AIDS in order "to make sense out of nonsense." The protagonist of his first novel, Self (1996), starts out life as a male then becomes female then turns male again…. His follow-up novel, Life of Pi, was nominated for a Governor General's Award in 2001, ranked as one of the Top 100 "intellectual books" of 2002 by the Sunday Times of London, and won the 2002 Man Booker Prize. It is about a boy who spends 227 days adrift in a lifeboat with a Royal Bengal tiger. Though inspired by the plot of Max and the Cats, a story about Nazism and dictatorship by Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar, Life of Pi sets its own agenda. It is a story to "make you believe in God."

Martel starts playfully with an Author's Note that may or may not be "real." The Author of the Note and the author of the book seem to share certain similarities: misgivings about the success of their first novels; a love of travel to spark the creative process; the practice of "the selective transforming of reality . . . to bring out its essence" in fiction.

It soon becomes clear the Author of the Note is the same as the one in the novel gathering information to write the life story of Piscine Molitor Patel, the sole survivor of the sinking of the Tsimtsum. The Author asserts a story is "always better appreciated if its ending is known first." Patel, called "Pi" since secondary school, is alive and well. But even for a believer it's hard to accept his story - which takes us from his Toronto home back to his father's zoo in the French Indian city of Pondicherry - will reveal God's face. The tiger, named Richard Parker at that, seems like overkill.

Pi, however, is quickly engaging. He is insightful, humourous, occasionally petty: "When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling." There is a choppiness to his speech, an elegant bluntness. This may have to do with where he was born and raised before he and his father, mother and brother disastrously set sail for Canada, members of their menagerie in tow. This may also be the result of recalling the sea-tossed events following the mysterious sinking of their ship July 2, 1977.

There is a slightly detached, bemused tone to Martel's writing, with moments of intrigued digression and easy punning, some of which fall flat. Pi is named after a Paris swimming pool. The name was inspired by the man who taught Pi to swim (the "gift" of the sea) and who leads the Author to him, now a man with a family of his own. A devout Hindu, Christian and Muslim, Pi needs little convincing of God's glory. He has dedicated his life to the study of religion and animals.

Seven months on a lifeboat, at first with a zebra, a hyena and an orangutan, then only with a tiger, can cause a man to plot such a course. "I have heard nearly as much nonsense about zoos as I have about God and religion," says Pi testily. "The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists."

One of the most effective scenes in the novel is when Pi's father instructs his family "that an animal is an animal, essentially and practically removed from us." This lesson is unforgettable and horrifying. The nature of a beast is never to be forgotten, romanticized or underestimated.

Pi thinks to defeat Richard Parker by outlasting him since he can't get him off the lifeboat. He soon realizes his is a fool's strategy: crazed with hunger, the tiger will eventually come after him. To survive, Pi must mark out his own territory spiritually as well as physically. He confesses, "I descended to a level of savagery I never imagined possible"; yet the further he falls, the closer to God he reaches: religion is "about our dignity, not our depravity" to Pi, who goes about taming the tiger. "It was not a question of him or me, but of him and me."

Pi's story takes some strange turns indeed before he is rescued. Swift comes to mind where once Naipaul lurked. Pi meets up with a blind castaway when he himself is temporarily blind. He spends time on an island of edible algae that turns "carnivorous" at night. The island is populated by meerkats. It's all a little hard to believe, especially for the Japanese officials who wish to get to the bottom of the sinking of the Tsimtsum. It doesn't help that "Richard Parker, companion of my torment, awful, fierce thing that kept me alive, moved forward and disappeared forever from my life" into the Mexican jungle, where they ran aground. "Mr. Patel, we don't believe your story," says the senior official, Tomohiro Okamoto. "It doesn't hold up." Like Wilson (the volleyball) in the movie Cast Away, Richard Parker seems more a very useful survival aid than actual.

Is the second story Pi tells Okamoto, "a story without animals that will explain the sinking of the Tsimtsum," any more believable? Pi embraces "form . . . the harmony of order"; the Author's book, in contrast to the irrational number Pi's nickname represents, ends neatly, in 100 brisk chapters, yet it is the question of which story the officials prefer - of which they like better between his two versions - that cuts to the heart of the matter, not which makes more sense. Okamoto remembers Pi as "very thin, very tough, very bright." The novel's closing words, taken from his final report, invite a smile of near credulity. Their concern for what is believable is what makes Life of Pi a very thoughtful piece of work. They are a reminder to trust the tale, not always the teller.