SOURCE: Hollingshead, Greg. “Citizen ‘I.’” Quill & Quire 62, no. 4 (April 1996): 1, 28.

In the following review of Self, Hollingshead maintains that Martel's writing demonstrates a beautiful authenticity.

Yann Martel is probably best known for “The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios,” which first appeared in the Malahat Review in 1990 and subsequently in the third Journey Prize Anthology and after that as the title story of Martel's 1993 collection from Knopf. “Helsinki Roccamatios” is a good story, but “The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto With One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton,” in the September 1992 Malahat and also included in the Knopf collection, is a better story, and one that more clearly says, This is something new. Certainly in Canada. There have been Clark Blaise and Norman Levine, but as I read him, Martel has more in common with Granta contributors such as Paul Theroux, Bruce Chatwin...