The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios [Paperback]

Yann Martel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2005

Here are four unforgettable stories by the author of Life of Pi. Written earlier in Martel's career, these tales display that startling mix of dazzle and depth that have made Yann Martel an international phenomenon.

Inventive in form and timeless in content, each story is moving and thought-provoking. A Canadian university student visiting Washington, D.C., experiences the Vietnam War through an intense musical encounter. Variations of a warden's letter to the mother of a man he has just executed reveal how each life is contained in its end. A young man's fascination with the mirror-making machine he finds in his grandmother's attic is juxtaposed with the reminiscences it evokes from his grandmother. And, in the exquisite title story, a young man dying of AIDS joins his friend in fashioning a story of the Roccamatio family of Helsinki, set against the yearly march of the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Given the spectacular success of Canadian writer Yann Martel's bestselling novel Life of Pi (winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize and Amazon.com's Best Book of 2002) it's no surprise that his early short story collection, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, would attract new readers. Originally published in 1993, these four well-crafted stories have been slightly revised by him for this new edition (the book's first publication in America). Only one of these stories, "Manners of Dying," reads like apprentice work, but even this piece is highly accomplished and full of interest. Every page here shows the development of Martel's stealthy, understated prose (think Paul Auster with a Canadian quietude). In fact, the title story begins so calmly and matter-of-factly that the opening pages feel almost listless. A college senior describes his budding friendship with the freshman he has been assigned to shepherd through the first months of the school year. When the new friend is diagnosed with AIDSs (it is the mid-1980s, and this is a more-or-less immediate death sentence) the emotional stakes gradually increase, not only in predictable ways, as the reluctant narrator is drawn further into his friend's life, but in the jokes, arguments, and revelations brought to light by their collaboration in a sparkling intellectual game--a story the friends write together, in alternating turns--that provides a delicate scaffold for the private drama of death. --Regina Marler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Pathos is leavened with inventiveness and humor in this collection of a novella and three short stories first published in a slightly different version in Canada in 1993, nearly 10 years before Martel's Booker-winning Life of Pi. The minor key is established in the title novella, a graceful, multilayered story of a young man dying of AIDS, told through the refracting lens of the history of the 20th century. Infected by a blood transfusion, Paul receives the diagnosis during his freshman year of college. The narrator, Paul's student mentor, devises a plan to keep Paul engaged in life—they will invent the story of the Roccamatio family of Helsinki, which will have 100 chapters, each thematically linked to an event of the 20th century. The connection between the history, the stories and Paul's condition is subtle and always shifting, as fluid and elusive as life itself. The experience of death is delicately probed in the next two stories as well: in one, a Canadian student's life is changed when he hears the Rankin Concerto, written in honor of a Vietnam veteran; in the other, a prison warden reports to a mother on her son's last moments before he is executed. The book closes with a surreal fable in which mirrors are made from memories. These are exemplary works of apprenticeship, slight yet richly satisfying.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (September 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156032457
• ISBN-13: 978-0156032452
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,226,889 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

Yann Martel, the son of diplomats, was born in Spain in 1963. He grew up in Costa Rica, France, Mexico, Alaska, and Canada and as an adult has spent time in Iran, Turkey, and India. After studying philosophy in college, he worked at various odd jobs until he began earning his living as a writer at the age of twenty-seven. He lives in Montreal.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Outside The Box And Slightly Off The Mark, January 29, 2005

By 

Louis N. Gruber "Author of Jay" (Lexington, SC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (Hardcover)

Yann Martel, author of the best-selling Life of Pi, here offers some of his earlier work--four short stories which do not exactly fit the short story mold.

The first story, same name as the collection's title, is an extended meditation on dying. As the young narrator struggles with his friend's terminal illness, the two men embark on a project to pass the time and keep up their spirits. They decide to write a novel about an imaginary family--the Roccamatios of Helsinki, whose lives parallel, year by year, the years of the twentieth century. We are not told much about this novel or its characters. The writing, the research, the assembling of facts about the twentieth century, are used to highlight the illness and death of the friend.

Also included are a story about a Viet Nam veteran, a talented but unrecognized composer who struggles with the meaning of life while working as a night custodian in a bank. And a composition about the night a young man is hanged (for some unnamed crime), the story told in multiple variations, over and over. The book concludes with a strange tale of an old machine that makes mirrors out of memories. And about the importance of memory itself.

Author Yann Martel does not shrink from the extreme and unusual. After all, he wrote the novel about a young man in a lifeboat with a tiger, and made it almost believable. The stories in this small collection are similarly over-the-edge. They are well written, clever, almost too clever. For me the author allows his cleverness and his mastery of the language to overshadow the characters. The stories are not meant to be literally believeable, but, in the end, they are not emotionally believable either.

Still, these stories are well worth reading. If you liked the Life of Pi you will love the Roccamatios as well. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Oddly disjointed, December 6, 2004

By 

Gregory Baird (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (Hardcover)

Yann Martel's Booker prize-winning 'Life of Pi' is a phenomenal book, and I have been eager to read something else by him ever since I finished it. I got my wish with this book, which is a re-printing of an earlier work of his. In the author's note Martel refers to its stories as his world premiere, harking back to the days when he was just starting out as a writer. He ambitiously set out to combine intellect and emotion in his stories, reasoning that intellect makes a story last while it is emotion that makes it relatable and appeals to the reader. It is easy to see Martel's developing genius in these stories, but there are unfortunate growing pains as well. In his quest to write stories both intelligent and stirring Martel did what most inexperienced writers will do: he over-reached. The stories are intellectual (at times inaccessably so), and there is plenty of emotion represented, but there is little heart. The lone exception is the titular story, about a man and his dying friend, who create a fictional family to tell stories about. It's a brilliant story, executed as only the author of a book like 'Life of Pi' could do. 'The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American composer John Morton' really could have done with a shorter title, but is almost up to Martel's standard. It's too long; the description of the concert itself could have been shorter as that part is boring, and the real meat of the story gets crammed into the somewhat illogical events of the last few pages. The meat, once you've gotten to it, is quite juicy actually. The payoff saves the story, but the same can't be said of 'Manners of Dying' -- which has an interesting premise but leads nowhere. It's high-concept writing that misses the mark. 'The Vita Aeterna Mirror Company' has a great message to relate, but the medium sending it is far from perfect.

I would recommend this book only to big fans of 'Life of Pi', because I do not think that anyone who was new to Yann Martel would appreciate this book for what it is: a starting point. As for myself, I'm revising my previous belief that I wanted to read something else by Martel to that I would like to read something new by him.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars interesting start, October 24, 2004

By 

madhu m (Chennai, India) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (Hardcover)

yann martel renowned for his booker prize winning life of pi, started off his publishing career with this colelction of short stories/novellas. the stories range from the sublime, to the sad to the silly covering a wide-ranging set of topics from death, to inspiration to music to memory.

while the stories are well written they sometimes lack in ideas, however martel's steady prose and studied observations make them a fast read. while these 4 stories will make do for a quiet evening, it is interesting to read an author who is still working at mastering his craft.

more novelty than genius.