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Title details for The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel - Available

The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

by Yann Martel
John Randolph Jones
Audiobook
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1 of 1 copy available
Here are four unforgettable stories by the author of Life of Pi. In the exquisite title novella, a very 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 whose horrors and miracles their story echoes. In "The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American composer John Morton," a Canadian university student visits Washington DC and experiences the Vietnam War and its aftermath through an intense musical encounter. In "Manners of Dying," variations of a warden's letter to the mother of a son he has just executed reveal how each life is contained in its end. The final story, "The Mirror Machine," is about a young man who discovers an antique mirror-making machine in his grandmother's attic. The man's fascination with the object is juxtaposed with the longwinded reminiscences it evokes from his grandmother. Written earlier in Martel's career, these tales are as moving as they are thought-provoking, as inventive in form as they are timeless in content. They display that startling mix of dazzle and depth that have made Yann Martel an international phenomenon.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    November 22, 2004

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781598871586
      • File size: 130746 KB
      • Duration: 04:32:23

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      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
    • Publisher's Weekly

      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.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 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.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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