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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
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.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Oddly disjointed, December 6, 2004
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.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
interesting start, October 24, 2004
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.
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