Book Review: The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

This week’s book is The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel.

1. What I like about the book

This book was a gift from a dear friend, and is the kind of book I’m unlikely to buy for myself since I don’t usually read short stories. So it gave me good food for thought that I would probably not have found on my own. Yann Martel is astoundingly creative in its narrative format and painfully truthful in his portrayal of the realities of life. The book comprises four novellas.

The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

The title story is the longest, about the first person narrator accompanying a young man Paul, who is dying of AIDs, through his last days. To help Paul cope with the endless days in hospital, the narrator decides that they will write a book together about a fictional family, the Roccamatios from Helsinki. Each chapter is to be based on one year of the last century, using a major world event that year as the base from which to build the story.

The actual story of the Roccamatios is never told. The historical facts for each year are listed, which makes this story good for increasing your general knowledge. Sandwiched between these facts is the description of a person dying from AIDs. This provides a fascinating juxtaposition of fact and fiction, events on a grand global scale contrasted with the minute details of the life of an individual, the triumph of world progress measured against the tragedy of one person’s death, the certainty of a past viewed from the present compared to the present fear of the unknown future.

I don’t know if Martel has first hand experience of watching a person die from AIDs or is simply a master at research and imagination, but the account is certainly believable, and very sad.

The Time I Heard the Private Donald J Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton

The incredibly long title of this story makes it deliciously eccentric even before you read the first sentence. It is about an unknown composer whose unknown composition is played badly by an unknown ensemble in an unknown decrepit theatre; yet when played, the piece hits those who hear it with the impact of an oncoming train, and fills the heart with both despairing sorrow and soaring delight.

The narrator later finds out that the man who wrote and performed that brilliant piece of music is a janitor. Although the story is purely fictional, it makes you wonder how many people there are out there who have genius which is never discovered by the world because of their circumstances and lack of opportunity.

Manners of Dying

A series of nine letters, written by a warden of a prison to the mother of a young man who was executed by hanging, provides a sobering glimpse into a world that few of us will ever see – how a person behaves in the last few hours before he goes to the gallows.

All nine letters are addressed to Mrs Barlow (possibly a play on the words “bars” and “gallows”) and refer to the young man as Kevin. I’m not sure if this is for simplicity so the author does not have to invent nine different mothers and sons, or if the novella is meant for the reader as an individual, suggesting that there are many ways to die and asking us to decide which letter we want to describe how we ourselves will behave in the face of fear and death.

The Vita Aeterna Mirror Company

This provides an interesting mental dialogue between a young man and his grandmother. Text on the left side of the page are the words of the grandmother, while text on the right side are the young man’s thoughts as she is speaking. Text which fills the whole horizontal space is the young man speaking from a later time as the narrator of the story.

Martel cleverly uses this layout to convey firstly, two persons’ simultaneous thinking processes and secondly, one person’s thoughts at different points in time. The genius is not in the story itself, but in the use of the spatial potential of a printed page.

2. Who should read this book and why

Those who have family or friends dying from AIDs

When someone you care about is dying, it can be the loneliest experience you have ever gone through. It gives comfort to know that you are truly not alone. There are others who have gone through the same, and others who understand. This book may be cathartic simply by speaking so honestly and clearly about what AIDs is like, instead of hushing the facts as many do.

Creative writers

Martel certainly writes in a way I have never seen before. His style is experimental yet successful in conveying the mood of the story and drawing the reader into the story with the intimacy of a shared understanding of the author’s methodology. There is a lot to learn from his daring uniqueness.

3. Quotes from the book

My favourite quote

“The foundation of a story is an emotional foundation. If a story does not work emotionally, it does not work at all… But a story must also stimulate the mind if it does not want to fade from memory. Intellect rooted in emotion, emotion structured by intellect – in other words, a good idea that moves – that was my lofty aim.” (page viii-ix )

Other quotes

“We were young, and the young can be radical. We’re not encrusted with habits and traditions. If we catch ourselves in time, we can start all over.” (page 17-18)

“Lasting optimism has one ally: reason. Any optimism that is unreasonable is bound to be dashed by reality, leading to even more unhappiness. Optimism, therefore, must always be illuminated by the gentle, purging light of reason and be unshakeably grounded in sanity of mind, so that pessimism becomes a foolish, short-sighted attitude. What this means – reasonableness being the tepid, inglorious thing it is – is that optimism can arise only from small but undeniable achievements.” (page 27)

“What a strange, wondrous thing, music. At last the chattering mind is silenced. No past to regret, no future to worry about, no more frantic knitting of words and thoughts. Only a beautiful, soaring nonsense. Sound – made pleasing and intelligible through melody, rhythm, harmony and counterpoint – becomes our thinking. The grunting of language and the drudgery of semiotics are left behind. Music is a bird’s answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilarated speechlessness.” (page 96)

4. Other reviews of the book

Kathy Pfister writes a brief review of the book, mostly about her personal reaction to the sadness found in it, reminding her, as it did me, of the time she herself accompanied a dying person on the last leg of his earthly journey.

12frogs provides another short write-up from the perspective of someone who knew of Martel’s work first through Life of Pi and therefore compares this earlier work to that bestseller with a critical but ultimately approving eye.

Ex Libris reviews the first two stories in the book, and also comments on the preface to the book which reflects on Martel’s growth as a writer. There are also some comments by other readers.



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Posted by Daphne | November 9, 2008 | in Book Reviews


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3 Responses to “Book Review: The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios”

  1. Jocelyn
    November 10th, 2008 @ 9:24 am

    Hi! could you also make a book review about the book THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF A DOG AT MIDGNIGHT. It gives a nice perspective of an autistic child.

  2. lydia
    November 10th, 2008 @ 1:49 pm

    hi Daphne, great review. makes me want to re-read the book, which I have been hunting high and low for but my copy seems to have gone missing. but yes, Yann Martel is a master of narrative fiction. he is better known for his booker prize winner the life of pi but I prefer the Helsinki Roccamatios :-)

  3. Daphne
    November 10th, 2008 @ 8:02 pm

    @ Jocelyn, great suggestion. I read that book a few years back, and maybe it’s time to read it again.

    @ Lydia, want to borrow my copy? ;) I haven’t read Life of Pi so this is my first experience of Yann Martel, and a very good one at that. Thanks again!

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