Books: Life after Pi: Tenuous tales from a Portuguese village

Fiction: The High Mountains of Portugal, Yann Martel, Canongate, hdbk, 352 pages, €22.50

Magic realism: Yann Martel takes the reader down unnecessary paths.

Sophie Gorman

Yann Martel sprang into the literary world in 2001 with his second novel, the Man Booker prize-winning Life of Pi. He followed this up, in 2010, with Beatrice and Vigil, a novel centred on an author who had huge literary success and didn't know how to write another novel. In this, his fourth novel, he returns to more straightforward magic realism.

The High Mountains of Portugal comprises three seemingly distinct stories, 'Homeless', 'Homeward' and 'Home', all tenuously linked by a small village in those titular high mountains.