Reviews for Fortune Smiles: Stories

by Adam Johnson

Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

To bring Johnson's six stories-which together won the 2015 National Book Award for fiction-to waiting ears takes a village of seasoned narrators. In "Nirvana," Jonathan McClain deftly voices a desperate husband who uses technology to soothe his ill wife. Dominic Hoffman-his narration resonating and growling both-reads "Hurricanes Anonymous," about a man's post-Katrina search for his son's mother. Cassandra Campbell, the collection's only woman, matter-of-factly brings a dead wife to life in "Interesting Facts." W. Morgan Sheppard is chillingly delusional as a former Stasi prison warden in "George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine." The pedophile in "Dark Meadow" gets a convincing chance in Will Damron's detached recitation. Greg Chun reads the titular standout, "Fortune Smiles," moving with staccato force between two North -Korean defectors trying comically, desperately, incongruously to adjust to their new lives in Seoul. As diverse as the characters and settings are throughout Johnson's lauded latest, so, too, are the narrators individually distinctive-and definitively seasoned (Chun, the only audiobook newbie, is a commercial and animation voice-over veteran). VERDICT Disturbing, riveting, devastating, raw, the collective result is a literary and aural revelation.-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.


Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

How do you follow a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel? For Johnson (The Orphan Master's Son), the answer is a story collection, and the tales within are hefty and memorable. Johnson goes deep (and long-there are only six pieces in this 300 pager) into unknown worlds. In the title story, two North Korean criminals adjust to post-defection life in South Korea; in "Nirvana," a man deals with his wife's illness by creating an app that lets people talk to the (fictional) recently assassinated president. Johnson lets us spend time with an East German prison commander whose former office is a tour stop in a "museum of torture"; a man coping with hurricanes Katrina and Rita and an array of personal problems; and, in "Dark Meadow," the highlight of a very strong collection, a pedophile trying to behave himself in the face of a variety of temptations. What these very different stories have in common is their assurance: the environments Johnson creates, along with the often problematic choices their inhabitants make, are totally believable. Escaping back to North Korea by balloon? Sure. Going to AA meetings because they offer child care? Makes sense if your ex has just dumped a toddler on you in post-Rita Lake Charles. Often funny, even when they're wrenchingly sad, the stories provide one of the truest satisfactions of reading: the opportunity to sink into worlds we otherwise would know little or nothing about, ones we might even cross the street to avoid. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A half-dozen sometimes Carver-esque yarns that find more-or-less ordinary people facing extraordinary challenges and somehow holding up. Tragedy is always close to the surface in Johnson's workwith tragicomic layerings, sometimes, but it's tragedy all the same. So it is with the opening story of the six here, "Nirvana," which takes its title from the Kurt Cobain-led rock band but shares a spirit with near-future films like Her and Gattaca. A software engineer, desperate to do right by his paralyzed wife, reanimates people from the past: "After the doctor left," the narrator says matter-of-factly, "I went into the garage and started making the president." It's science fiction of a kind but with an extra element of disspiritment: people exist, but we long for simulacra instead of them, "like she's forgotten that her arms don't work and there's no him to embrace." With more than a nod to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Orphan Master's Son (2012), Johnson calls on two North Korean defectors who, now in the South, haven't quite got their new world sussed out but are starting to get an inkling of how things work: "Christian talk, when said in a non-Christian way, scares these Southerners to death." Their lessons in fitting in include essentials such as "handling money, hygiene, being pleasant, avoiding crime," but it's clear that no amount of instruction will make them feel at home. Safe houses, hospices, hospitals: these are the theaters where many of the stories take place, all enshrouded in a certain incomprehensionbut, to Johnson's great credit, seldom in hopelessness, for his characters are inclined to endure against the odds: "You turn the ignition and drop the van in gear, and you know this is no ordinary event." Bittersweet, elegant, full of hard-won wisdom: this is no ordinary book, either. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.