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Loading... The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (1993)by Yann Martel
Darkly eloquent, deeply saddening. Modernist in overall structure that never detracts from the compassionate content.  mermind | Aug 26, 2012 |  From the title novella to the ending story, Martel's work here is graceful and fascinating. His introduction might note that these are early and less masterful works than that which has made him famous, but they are excellent and worthwhile nontheless. Each story shows an adept understanding of how conflicting ideas and threads might be woven together, and gracefully draws together narratives and experiments that bring each page to life. Simply, once you pick this up, you won't put it down. Even my mother, whom I've never known to read short stories, began the first one on a whim...and soon finished the collection. Absolutely recommended for any reader. (  ) whitewavedarling | Jun 4, 2012 | This is a collection of four long short stories. While I didn’t think that they lived up to Martel’s well-known novel Life of Pi, and the collection is uneven, it is certainly readable. The strongest two stories are the first two, the title story and the one that follows up, which has too long a title to type out here. The title story is about a college student who is watching his young friend die of AIDS. To help divert him, he invents a game where they each have to tell a story about a fictional family—the Helsinki Roccamatios—and each story must relate to an important event in a subsequent year of the 20th century up to the present. The narrator does not provide the stories they told, only the historical events behind them. I have to admit that I couldn’t always see how this related to the main storyline, and it is a complicated conceit, but it’s a moving story nonetheless. The stories that weren’s so successful were a lot more obvious and ham-fisted about the emotions they were trying to elicit. They were also experimental in form, in a way that I didn’t think contributed much to the story. You can see that Martel is learning his craft in this collection, and while I found it entertaining enough, I would probably recommend just reading (or rereading) Life of Pi instead. (  ) sturlington | Oct 19, 2011 | This was absolutely the best book I read this summer. I loved the short stories and Mr. Martel's writing continues to be sensitive, dark and funny. (  ) kathrynburns133 | Aug 27, 2010 | This is abook of short stories written in the early years of Martel's career as an author. The most moving of the stories was an attempt to entertain a good friend dying of AIDS. The writer didn't know how to relate to his dying friend, so they came up with the idea of telling each other stories about a family they made up. Handles the issues of AIDS and dealing with terminal illness with great wisdom. I found all the stories entertaining. (  ) dianemb | Jul 5, 2010 | no reviews | add a review
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