Yann Martel, the writer of “Life of Pi” has done it again . almost. In “The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios,” Martel has provided Pi lovers with a collection of stories he wrote long before his modern-day classic about a boy in the company of a Bengal tiger. Fans of Martel’s writing style, which masterfully combines youthful curiosity with heartbreaking humanism, will greatly appreciate Martel’s works.
A novella, the first of these four stories, is the best. It is the story of two friends, Paul and the unnamed narrator, at the peak of their kindred friendship. The two are college students: Paul, a spirited freshman; our narrator, a young woman preparing to graduate. She is taken aback by their closeness.
In first-person perspective, as they are walking up to the library, we learn that Paul is sick. After a bout of pneumonia and a visit to the doctor, Paul tells her he is dying of AIDS.
This story can now go in three ways: the Tuesdays with Morrie route, the fall-in-love-at-the-last-minute-and-watch-the-sunrise route or the writer can muster up some originality. Luckily, our two pals aren’t Tuesday people, and the only kind of love between these two is that of two platonic friends.
To cope with Paul’s disease, she has an epiphany in which the two of them will develop a story about a family that parallels each year of the 20th century from 1901 to 1986. She will get the odd years, and Paul will get the even ones. She does not share with the reader the actual story of the Roccamatio family: “Certain intimacies shouldn’t be made public . The story of the Helsinki Roccamatios was often whispered. And it wasn’t whispered to you. Of these AIDS years, all I have kept – outside my head – is this record.”
From this part of the novella to its end, “The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios” is broken into two sections which coherently flow together. In between Paul’s battle with AIDS and her inability to accept his imminent death, a paragraph is given to each year of their story. These paragraphs are simple bits of historical trivia, and most of them mirror Paul’s feelings. War, death, and tragedy often take place in the trivia he selects to represent each year, and she doesn’t argue with him.
The end of the novella packs a powerful punch. There are times when this novella tries too hard to reach out to the reader, but there is no doubt that it will touch you in ways you would least expect.
The other three samples of Martel’s genius, all short stories, are incomparable to each other. The first short story, “The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton,” is about an undiscovered composer. The second, “Manners of Dying,” is a series of letters in which a warden writes several versions of how a man named Kevin Barlow faces his execution on his last day. The third, my favorite, is called “The Vita Aeterna Mirror Company” and it is about a grandmother whose mirror-making machine is powered by memories.
The first two short stories had unique premises, but neither had the quality to be expected of Martel (seriously, people: read “Life of Pi”). The third was written in an odd but effective style. It is cut in half from the top to the bottom of the page, separating the thoughts of two people in a room. A grandmother talks, talks and talks about how she met the perfect man to her grandson, who is bored by her stories. Her descriptive memories are told in italics on the left side; his thoughts, on the right. Each time he stops listening and begins wondering why she can’t change the subject, her words turn into a hilarious series of blahs. When he finds an elaborate machine in the basement, however, he finds that his grandmother’s elaborate recollections have a little magic in them. He starts listening.
Martel’s imagination is a thing of wonder. He has a gift, and it is to tell stories that reach the reader lucky enough to experience them. While this collection of stories is nowhere near as captivating as “Life of Pi,” Martel’s style and the essence of his characters in “The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios” are as arguably real as the life of Pi Patel himself.

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