The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

Four stories from before Martel's breakout LIFE OF PI are read by four proficient narrators, whose voices match their characters well. Jeff Woodman, in the title novella, is perhaps the standout, but he has the meatiest, most emotional, material. Barbara Caruso, a second reader in the last story, overdoes the "quavery old lady" voice. But good use is made of the aural medium as the depiction of how her words sound to her grandson--"blah, blah, blah"--overlays his spoken thoughts. The stories themselves are pleasant enough middlebrow fiction (think Thornton Wilder as novelist), sometimes gimmicky but generally entertaining, except for the monotonous "Manners of Dying," which goes on too long. W.M. 2006 Audie Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

December 1, 2004
Pathos is leavened with inventiveness and humor in this collection of a novella and three short stories first published in a slightly different version in Canada in 1993, nearly 10 years before Martel's Booker-winning Life of Pi . The minor key is established in the title novella, a graceful, multilayered story of a young man dying of AIDS, told through the refracting lens of the history of the 20th century. Infected by a blood transfusion, Paul receives the diagnosis during his freshman year of college. The narrator, Paul's student mentor, devises a plan to keep Paul engaged in life--they will invent the story of the Roccamatio family of Helsinki, which will have 100 chapters, each thematically linked to an event of the 20th century. The connection between the history, the stories and Paul's condition is subtle and always shifting, as fluid and elusive as life itself. The experience of death is delicately probed in the next two stories as well: in one, a Canadian student's life is changed when he hears the Rankin Concerto, written in honor of a Vietnam veteran; in the other, a prison warden reports to a mother on her son's last moments before he is executed. The book closes with a surreal fable in which mirrors are made from memories. These are exemplary works of apprenticeship, slight yet richly satisfying. Agent, Jackie Kaiser.