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
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