The Facts Behind The Helsinki Roccamatios

Rating:
Summary: There are too many reviews for Life of Pi
Review: "Life of Pi" is so overrated. I don't doubt the author's talents. The story is just too simplistic. Characters are shallow, as they seem like cartoon figures. There are no obvious themes in the book, which isn't a bad thing in itself, but for something that is purporting to be literature, I would expect to find at least someting a human being can relate to. "Life of Pi" could have worked better as a children's book.

Rating:
Summary: Bumpy, Worthwhile Ride Into Martel's Just-Forming Universe
Review: If, like me, you are awaiting author Yann Martel's next creative work after his whimsical animal allegory, "Life of Pi", then you can get a fix in the meantime with these four short stories written by the author about ten years ago. You definitely see the talent forming and consequently expect unwarranted flashes of brazenness here and there.

The book's title is actually the title of the first story told in the first person. The Roccamatios are an imaginary Italian family living in Finland in the late 1980's, and their friend Paul is dying of AIDS. In order to alleviate the unrelenting grief of the situation, the narrator invents a game where he and Paul each takes turns picking one fact from each year of the twentieth century. Their characters reveal themselves piece by piece by what fact they choose. It's a creative if bit contrived two-character study, which ultimately reflects a dying wish to preserve the past and somehow immortalize Paul. The second story has the unwieldy title of "The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton." It's about a Canadian who visits Washington, D.C., in 1989, and has a chance encounter with a Vietnam War veteran who leads an ensemble of his former comrades in arms in an abandoned theater. The music they play becomes cathartic to the visitor, and in turn, the musicians recount their wartime experiences in unexpected ways. Like one of the better episodes of Rod Serling's "Night Gallery", the story becomes a meditative examination of loneliness, lost opportunities and reaching for something that is beyond your grasp.

The third story, entitled "Manners of Dying", consists of a more hackneyed premise, creative variations on a convicted criminal's last hours, including his execution. In true "Rashomon" style, each one is written in the form of a letter to the prisoner's mother from the warden of a correctional institution. In each version of his story, the main character details his last meal, whether he ate it, how much time he spent with the chaplain, what attitude he displayed in expectation of the inevitable and precisely how he died. One variation has him choking on a potato, another laughing hysterically, and so on. It's a bit like "Groundhog Day" only in this case, the prisoner ponders different aspects of his life with each variation. The last story, "The Vita Aeterna Mirror Company: Mirrors to Last Till Kingdom Come" gets its title from a strange device that an old woman has, a machine that makes mirrors and runs on memories. Structured like a play with different voices, the old woman tells her life story on the left side of the page and her grandson on the right. Like the famous "Far Side" cartoon with Ginger the dog, when the grandmother talks, all the boy hears is "blah-blah-blah". Of course, the ending is inevitable the grandson appreciating the device and then ultimately recognizing his grandmother to be a more interesting person than he realized.

You can see the wheels at work in these four stories and certainly the start of what would culminate with "Life of Pi". Familiar elements are evident - the ironic sense of play characters use when facing death, whimsical plot turns that have greater gravity than they appear, odd facts that meld apparent non-sequiturs into a cohesive storyline. This is definitely worthwhile reading for anyone who wants to see how Martel started creating his universe.

Rating:
Summary: A slender volume that packs an emotional and creative punch
Review: In the forward of THE FACTS BEHIND THE HELSINKI ROCCAMATIOS, Yann Martel, who is best known for his novel LIFE OF PI, shares how he spent years honing his craft and writing short stories and plays, some more successful than others. Now he has collected four of his best earlier stories (written in the 1980s) in a slender volume that packs an emotional and creative punch.

The title novella finds two young college friends struggling with issues of mortality as one dies of AIDS. The narrator, a college senior, is dumbfounded when he learns that his 19-year-old friend Paul has been diagnosed with AIDS. As Paul withers away (Martel writes that the flesh "melts"), his friend becomes part of the family, spending time and energy caring for Paul. As time goes on, he devises a plan to lift Paul's spirits and occupy their time. They will compose an epic story of a family in 86 parts, one part for each year of the century thus far. The activities of the Roccamatios, a Helsinki family of Italian origin, will mirror the events of the 20th century. Soon, the young men find parallels in Paul's life and dying in history. Their story is about the troubled century with moments of hope --- and it is implicitly Paul's story of dying as well.

Heartbreaking and well written as it is, it is sometimes difficult to decipher the parallels Martel intends from historical moments --- the parallels and ironies that Paul and his friend feel instinctively and deeply.

The second story, "The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton," is just as well written as the "Roccamatios," perhaps even more so. A young man in Washington D.C. for the first time is exploring the city and chances upon a music concert in a soon-to-be demolished theater. The highlight of the evening is the premiere of the Donald J. Rankin Concerto with One Discordant Violin, an indescribably moving piece about the loss and violence of the Vietnam War. After the performance, the narrator follows the soloist and composer to his job as a bank janitor and learns the story behind the music and its creator.

While less compelling, the other two stories in this collection, "Manners of Dying" and "The Mirror Machine," are also interesting and original. Somewhat different in tone and style from LIFE OF PI, THE FACTS BEHIND THE HELSINKI ROCCAMATIOS is just as thought-provoking and unique. It gives the reader an interesting glimpse into the maturation and evolution of Martel as a writer.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

Rating:
Summary: interesting start
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Oddly disjointed
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Outside The Box And Slightly Off The Mark
Review: 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.