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Fortune Smiles Stories Adam Johnson 9780812997477 Books

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Fortune Smiles Stories Adam Johnson 9780812997477 Books

I love to read short story collections and I usually don't connect with every story included. It was not different with this book. However, there were some stories that knocked me for a loop with their intelligence, subtlety and outright outrageousness. Adam Johnson is a wordsmith, a man with an imagination as big as the universe, a post-modernist and a traditionalist, a writer for all seasons.

The first story in the collection, 'Nirvana' is about a woman with Guillain-Barre syndrome. She is paralyzed by the disease and spends most of her waking time listening to Kurt Cobain. Her husband is a free source computer genius who has been able to bring to life a past president of the United States who has been assassinated in the past. He is able to talk to the president and the president answers him but only with phrases he's actually used when he was alive. Both husband and wife have experienced great loss and as the husband states, "This feeling of being in proximity to something that's lost to you, it seems like my whole life right now".

'Interesting Facts' is a story close to my heart. A young woman with children is going through treatment for breast cancer and the treatment is brutal. She often wonders what her husband would do should she succumb to the disease. What is particularly interesting, besides the narrative itself, is that the woman's husband has won a Pulitzer prize for a novel about North Korea, and he gets invited to all these functions with beautiful women. She worries if one of them will seduce him. I wonder how much of the author's real life is contained in this story.

There's a story of a UPS driver who 'inherits' a child after Hurricane Katrina, a story about an ex-Stasi prison guide, as well as a few others in this collection. They are all well-written and interesting. It is the above two, however, that spoke most personally to me.


Tags : Fortune Smiles: Stories [Adam Johnson] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>The National Book Award–winning story collection from the author of  The Orphan Master’s Son </i>offers something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world.</b> <b>“MASTERFUL.”— The Washington Post     </i>“ENTRANCING.”— O: The Oprah Magazine     </i>“PERCEPTIVE AND BRAVE.”— The New York Times</i></b> Throughout these six stories,Adam Johnson,Fortune Smiles: Stories,Random House,0812997476,FICTION Family Life.,FICTION Literary.,FICTION Short Stories (single author).,Short stories, American - 21st century,AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY FICTION,American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +,Family Life,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Family Life,Fiction Literary,Fiction Short Stories (single author),Fiction-Short Stories (single author),FictionFamily Life,FictionLiterary,GENERAL,General Adult,Literary,Short Stories (single author),Short stories,United States

Fortune Smiles Stories Adam Johnson 9780812997477 Books Reviews

When this book appeared on the list of Vine possibilities, I jumped on it. The way my life has been going recently, I could use a little hope and cheer. The title sounded like just what I needed.

That will teach me to choose a book without doing any research first.

In the book, Fortune Smiles is the name of a rigged North Korea-based lottery game.

The six stories feature a woman paralyzed and in the throes of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a man fighting his compulsion to molest little girls, a woman with breast cancer, a UPS driver dealing with personal crises and the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a former Stasi warden of a notorious prison for political prisoners in what was East Berlin and two men who rather accidentally defected from North Korea to South Korea, where they trade a totalitarian regime for the equally not-subtle indoctrination of glitzy capitalism and proselytizing Christianity.

Fortune hasn't smiled on any of these characters, unless she is enjoying some very cruel pranks.

I avidly read all the stories anyway. Johnson is a highly skilled writer who pulls the reader into unfamiliar territory and unfolds a good bit of social commentary.

I even finished the story about child molesters, although my stomach was churning as I read.

One of my favorites was "Interesting Facts," the one narrated by a woman with breast cancer. It was deftly written--so much so that I stopped part way through and reread to see how Johnson had led me down the path he wished without my seeing what he was doing.

I also enjoyed "Hurricanes Anonymous" because, really, who could not like a young Cajun UPS driver who keeps delivering packages while accompanied by his 2-year-old son Geronimo in spite of the ravages of hurricanes Katrina and Rita? His deliveries to the zombielike refugees living in a former Chuck E. Cheese stayed with me for days.

The writing kept me reading. This is not a book everyone will want to read. In fact, I'm not sure I wanted to read it, but I'm glad I did.
Short stories admittedly aren’t my favorite thing to read. I often find they are anticlimactic or that they feel unfinished, and I can’t help but have a difficult time pouring myself into a story that I know will end so quickly. But Adam Johnson’s short story collection, Fortune Smiles, won the National Book Award, so I had a feeling I was in store for something special, and I was anything but disappointed.

The stories – distinctly melancholy, darkly funny, bleak and sometimes surreal – are thematically consistent they’re about lonely people facing extraordinary challenges.

In Nirvana, a man’s wife has been stricken with Guillain-Barre syndrome, her entire body paralyzed for the past nine months. Struggling with his wife’s illness and her threat of suicide, he develops a program that allows him to speak to the hologram of a recently deceased president, and takes solace in his new confidant.

In Hurricanes Anonymous, a directionless young father takes care of his son in post-Katrina New Orleans.

In Interesting Facts, the ghost of a woman who died of breast cancer visits her family and worries about her husband moving on.

In George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine, a former Stasi prison warden is in denial about the atrocities committed under his watch, and eerily attempts to justify and rationalize torture as a necessary part of a functioning society.

In Dark Meadows – perhaps one of the most harrowing and disturbing stories I’ve ever read – a non-offending pedophile who himself was abused as a child helps the police track child pornography cases and finds himself looking after two neglected young girls in his neighborhood.

And finally, in Fortune Smiles, a man who defected from North Korea struggles to adapt to life in South Korea and dreams of returning to his home country.

The problem with many short story collections is that they are uneven. While some of the stories take hold of you, others are immediately forgettable. But with Fortune Smiles, almost every single story had me captivated – with the exception, perhaps, of Hurricanes Anonymous. If you enjoy short stories, don’t miss this collection. And even if you typically don’t, give it a try anyway.
I love to read short story collections and I usually don't connect with every story included. It was not different with this book. However, there were some stories that knocked me for a loop with their intelligence, subtlety and outright outrageousness. Adam Johnson is a wordsmith, a man with an imagination as big as the universe, a post-modernist and a traditionalist, a writer for all seasons.

The first story in the collection, 'Nirvana' is about a woman with Guillain-Barre syndrome. She is paralyzed by the disease and spends most of her waking time listening to Kurt Cobain. Her husband is a free source computer genius who has been able to bring to life a past president of the United States who has been assassinated in the past. He is able to talk to the president and the president answers him but only with phrases he's actually used when he was alive. Both husband and wife have experienced great loss and as the husband states, "This feeling of being in proximity to something that's lost to you, it seems like my whole life right now".

'Interesting Facts' is a story close to my heart. A young woman with children is going through treatment for breast cancer and the treatment is brutal. She often wonders what her husband would do should she succumb to the disease. What is particularly interesting, besides the narrative itself, is that the woman's husband has won a Pulitzer prize for a novel about North Korea, and he gets invited to all these functions with beautiful women. She worries if one of them will seduce him. I wonder how much of the author's real life is contained in this story.

There's a story of a UPS driver who 'inherits' a child after Hurricane Katrina, a story about an ex-Stasi prison guide, as well as a few others in this collection. They are all well-written and interesting. It is the above two, however, that spoke most personally to me.