The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

Martel's first book is a collection of four stories. The title story follows a young man dealing with the illness of a friend, who is in hospital and who tells him about a family's strange history. The other stories look at loss, memory and the power of imagination to console. They already show his interest in fable, in unusual narrators and in how stories help people cope with hardship. The collection is short, inventive and gentle in tone, and it is often read as a first sketch of themes he later developed in his novels.