The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

short stories — weird
Letter from prison warden to mother?

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.

Like many people, I first encountered Yann Martel's work with the stunning "Life of Pi", which was a playful and engaging book with dark notes to it, and which holds up to repeated readings. (There are other, less kind views of the book on librarything.)

"The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios" is a book of Martel's short fiction written prior to "Life of Pi". Other reviews (1 2)have criticised his experimentation with narrative devices as overly contrived. I can see that three of the four stories could be read that way, and to be honest, it's hard to shake that off as being anything other than a fair criticism.

The titular story revolves around storytelling game in which a man and his friend escape from a devastating illness by show more creating the history of a fictional family, kind of like "Hundred Years of Solitude: The Home Game". There are nice spots in the story, but on the whole the device does overstay its welcome a bit.

The next story is entitled "The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton". The lack of economy in even the names of stories tells you something about the maturity of his writing, although in this case, the story transcends its title. It is an ode to serendipity, to siezing the moment to discover something of the truth of another human being. The narrator stumbles on to a performance by a veterans' orchestra of a series of works, including the titular Rankin concerto. His pursuit of and interaction with the composer is well handled, and rings true with its small details of a failed life with brief hints of greatness. Not to spoil the next review, but I have a cold at the moment, and blew through this book and "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini in a single sitting. Reading these books one after the other helped me see that this story is the strongest in the book precisely because it highlight's the author's ability to collect and present the details that make a compelling character.

The other stories in the book display this talent to perhaps lesser effect. "Manner of Dying" is engaging enough, but reads somewhat like an episode of the Twilight Zone, but without any metaphysical questions. "The Vita Æterna Mirror Company" is also engaging enough, but is so uneconomical with space (half the page is often literally filled with "blah blah blah") that it reads as though it were five pages of story spread thinly to cover just over forty pages. Contrast this with Borges, who is so economical that five pages merit their own careful study and reflection, or with Updike, whose short stories are so dense with descriptive detail that I can typically only read one or two at a sitting before my focus is strained (perhaps reading Updike is the antidote to the lack of focus that Google is purported to be engendering in modern readers).

In short, this is a collection that has its moments, but is obviously among the author's early work. To be honest, it's not a book that I would have bought myself, but having received it as a gift, I'm glad to have had the chance to read it (the "Rankin" story especially). show less

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.

Warning: I'm going to talk about the content of the four stories making up this early steffort by Martel.

I do wonder at the notion we have of marking a line between artists whose commitment involves a profound continuing investigation of a Thing, and commercial hacks who are formula writing for no more than mere money. How do you tell which is which? How do I know that my friend Petrus who spent years making pots, dashing them to the ground and then sticking the pieces back together was of the former class? Is it that if you fail to make money at it, this failure maintains your integrity?

This book comprises four stories which explore the act of repetition. I guess it is a vital part of successful writing, to be able to repeat one's show more self without the audience getting restless.

The title story is about the narrator watching a close friend die of AIDS. The repetition is in the horrific detail of his decline. It was strangely gripping and I wished I hadn't been in a cafe at the point where it had me in tears.

rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2017/10/25/the-facts-behind-the-hels... show less

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 show more 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. show less

I don't generally pick up "stories" to read but this was an audio with a description at the beginning, by Yann Martel, of how these were some of the early and favorite stories of his that he wrote---and oh my goodness did he write, between odd jobs and living with his parents so that he "could" write, because, as he says, he just had to. And yes, you could see how Life of Pi sort of came together with the incredible variation in the way this author thinks--often with an autobiographical portion. Although I enjoyed all four of the stories in this collection, I think I was "most enchanted" with the Mirror story. He is a fascinating author and I am very curious about his newest book.

The second published work by Yann Martel, this collection of short stories gives some indication as to what he'd be capable of in the future (LIfe of Pi). But, the stories were mostly written much earlier than the publish date I'm pretty sure, so there's not the level of experience or confidence you'll see in a seasoned writer. I believe the stories do give a glimpse of Martel as a person. Unless he totally disassociates himself with characters, I would imagine he's a person with plenty of empathy for his fellow human being.

Getting back to the writing - this was an "in that moment" book. I mean, that in that moment of interacting with the text it was good enough, but after putting it down, the moment passed and I don't think the show more stories will stick much with the exception of the final story.

The first story, more a novella and the title story of the piece deals with a friend comforting a man dying of AIDS over weeks and months of his deteriorating health.

The second story (I'm blanking on the full title, but it has "One Discordant Violin" as part of it) deals with a concert and an imperfect, yet perfect composition by an unknown composer, played by his friends in a guerrilla-style classical performance and how it haunts the narrator.

Manners of Dying - was a quick read because it was the same intro paragraph or two followed by the account of a convict being executed. The story is told maybe a dozen times with variations on what the last meal is, how the individual reacts to his last few hours and how the execution goes off.

The final story (another long title that I've already forgotten except for it having "Mirrors" in it). Is about a grandson spending time with his grandmother, but not realizing what he's missing as he's thinking to himself about how he cherishes interaction with people above materialism. In the end, materialism is important to the extent that one particular piece provides a key to something he neglected to grasp. I think this story may be worth re-reading. show less