The High Mountains of Portugal

So, my first novel of 2017 is a proper start of any literary year. The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel, known to all because of his famous Life of Pi. Since that Man Booker prize, Martel has written several novels, of which I've only read Virgil and Beatrice. That left me so bewildered, with its religious commentary, its animal imagery, and its gruesome WWII references, that I haven't been tempted to pick up any of his new novels since.
Until The High Mountains of Portugal. This novel got lots of positive reviews, the main gist of which was that here we had a proper story again, not just religious ranting. The blurb was also promising:
A man thrown backwards by heartbreak goes in search of an artefact that could unsettle history. A woman carries her husband to a doctor in a suitcase. A Canadian senator begins a new life, in a new country, in the company of a chimp called Odo. From these stories of journeying, of loss and faith, Yann Martel weaves a novel unlike any other: moving, profound and magical.
And really, that says it all.
The first story takes place in 1904, in Lisbon. A widower sets off for the high mountains of Portugal to find a religious artefact. He will travel by his uncle new automobile. I really liked the story at first, because the protagonist is very likable, and the description of the journey and the world of that time is well done. But there was a point, when the car has almost burnt down, his supplies dwindle, he gets lost, and is at a tragic low point, that it felt like the tragic low point in a really desperate novel, something like Beyond Sleep, that I almost lost interest. There is only so much drama you can take before you become indifferent to it. But then he finally makes his way to Tuizelo in the high mountains of Portugal, and the story finishes strongly.
The second story takes place in 1938, in a larger city close to the high mountains. A pathologist working late on New Year's Eve is troubled first by his wife, who delivers a ranting monologue on Christ and Agatha Christie, and then a woman from Tuizelo, who carries her husband in a suitcase. This story was the most perplexing of all, especially in hindsight, when you realise how it all fits together; not just the allegories in the story itself, but also how the story fits within the two other stories in the novel. There are many links, but you don't see them at first.
The third story is set in Canada in 1981, and involves a senator whose wife has also just died. In a weird turn of events, he also ends up in Tuizelo, with a chimpanzee by his side. Chimpanzees also played an important part in the first two stories of this novel, but to explain how would be giving away most of the finer details that are best left to discover for yourself. This story is by far the best of the three; the plot is moving, the protagonist is the most likable and believable, and somehow the language seems to flow better. I was reminded of Life of Pi, where a human protagonist also finds himself living together with a strong, wild animal. Only this time, the human does so out of his own free will, of course.
The standard Martel elements are there; lots of animal imagery, lots of religious commentary, but also beautiful figurative language; "Loneliness comes up to him like a sniffing dog. It circles him insistently. He waves it away, but it refuses to leave him alone." And in the end, you're not really sure what to believe. Was this (again) all one big allegory? Was it another commentary on the way humans and animals live side by side on this planet? Or was it all about grief, and loss, and how that makes you see things that aren't there?
I've read some reviews, and people are split right down the middle on this one. Half of them love it, half of them hate it. Funnily enough, I don't really fit in either group but find myself somewhere in the middle, because I loved the last story, but the other two not so much. I do like how they are connected, how elements from the first story suddenly reappear in the most unexpected places in the other ones, but in some cases, it is a bit too obvious. You can see them coming for mile.s Also, it would be nice to have some sort of closure other than the relatively open ending we now have. It was beautiful, and moving, but it does leave you with the feeling of 'now what?'. What was the point of it all? And maybe that is exactly what Yann Martel intended, but even so, a novel of this magnitude deserves a better ending.