Rajiv Surendra first heard of Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi on the set of Mean Girls. The young Toronto actor was on a break from playing “rapping mathlete” Kevin Gnapoor, waiting for a toaster for his bagel, when a cameraman made a more-than-literary recommendation: “ ‘You’ve gotta read it, bud. It’s a book about you,’ he said.”

As Surendra recounts in his charming new memoir The Elephants in My Backyard, he quickly comes to agree. The similarities between the lives of the fictional Pi and the teenage Surendra — first-generation Canadian, the son of Tamil immigrants — seem overwhelming. When he learns that the book is going to be adapted to film, Surendra does everything in his power to earn the title role.

From travelling to India to follow in Pi’s footsteps to braving the pools at the University of Toronto to learn how to swim to meeting with a shipwreck survivor, Surendra attempts to mould himself into such a convincing facsimile of Pi that no casting director will be able to resist him.

It would be easy enough to learn the outcome of Surendra’s quest with a quick click on IMDB, but, as with so many things, it’s the journey that counts here, more than the destination.

The Elephants in My Backyard (the title refers to the elephants in the Toronto zoo, which Surendra can hear across the valley bordering his family’s Scarborough home) is a deceptively charming, understated read.

Yes, there are moments of intense emotional pain (as one would expect growing up the son of an abusive father), confusion (as a member of an immigrant family, trapped, as the cliché goes, between two worlds) and frustration.

These are leavened, though, with passages of high humour, as when the fastidious Surendra recounts his sudden awareness of just what might be in the swimming pool water he is about to enter, small triumphs, and a surprising, emotional resolution.

It seems that, in attempting to become someone else, Surendra actually became himself.

The Elephants in My Backyard is a small book, a quiet, singular story, but it is one with considerable power and grace.

Robert Wiersema’s latest book is Seven Crow Stories, out now.