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Fortune Smiles: Stories!
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Fortune Smiles: Stories!
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Fortune Smiles: Stories!
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Fortune Smiles: Stories!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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About this audiobook

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his acclaimed novel about North Korea, The Orphan Master's Son, Adam Johnson is one of America's most provocative and powerful authors. Critics have compared him to Kurt Vonnegut, David Mitchell, and George Saunders, but Johnson's new book will only further his reputation as one of our most original writers. Subtly surreal, darkly comic, both hilarious and heartbreaking, Fortune Smiles is a major collection of stories that gives voice to the perspectives we don't often hear, while offering something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world.
 
In six masterly stories, Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. "Nirvana," which won the prestigious Sunday Times short story prize, portrays a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finding solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In "Hurricanes Anonymous"-first included in the Best American Short Stories anthology-a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. "George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine" follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind.

Unnerving, riveting, and written with a timeless quality, these stories confirm Johnson as one of America's greatest writers and an indispensable guide to our new century.

Readers:
"Nirvana" read by Johnathan McClain 
"Hurricanes Anonymous" read by Dominic Hoffman 
"Interesting Facts" read by Cassandra Campbell 
"George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine" read by W. Morgan Sheppard 
"Dark Meadow" read by Will Damron 
"Fortune Smiles" read by Greg Chun 

Advance praise for Fortune Smiles

"How do you follow a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel? For Johnson, the answer is a story collection, and the tales are hefty and memorable. . . . In the title story, two North Korean criminals adjust to post-defection life in South Korea. . . . 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."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"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 work-with tragicomic layerings. . . . Bittersweet, elegant, full of hard-won wisdom: this is no ordinary book, either."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review) 

Praise for Adam Johnson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Orphan Master's Son

"Harrowing and deeply affecting . . . a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice."-Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Remarkable . . . the single best work of fiction published [this year]."-The Wall Street Journal

"A great novel can take implausible fact and turn it into entirely believable fiction. That's the genius of The Orphan Master's Son."-The Washington Post

“An epic feat of storytelling.”-Zadie Smith

“A triumph of imagination . . . [Grade:] A.”-Entertainment Weekly

Editor's Note

Darkly funny…

Full of dark humor and deeply human reflections, it’s no wonder that Adam Johnson’s follow up to his Pulitzer-winning novel won the 2015 National Book Award for Fiction.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 18, 2015
ISBN9781101890226
Unavailable
Fortune Smiles: Stories!

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Rating: 4.002642645502646 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read Johnson's short story, Nirvana, through Penguin Random House's Season of Stories promotion. I'd already added Fortune Smiles to my ever lengthening TBR list but Johnson's name didn't click for me when I received the first part of this short story in my email. I'm glad to see that Nirvana is a part of this collection, however. It's become a solid reason to move this higher up my list.

    What do weed, a presidential persona, and Nirvana lyrics have in common? Nine months after Charlotte's Guillain-Barre syndrome diagnosis, they've become liferafts for a husband and wife that are struggling to cope with what their normal currently is and what it might become. In Nirvana, Johnson throws the reader into the midst of this tensely drawn dynamic set in the near-future tech Eden of Palo Alto. Whether other people understand it or not, whether you fully understand it or not, anything can look like a liferaft when you're drowning. When you're lucky enough to find something that works, all you know is to not let go.

    I think Johnson was able to flesh out the desperation of adjusting to a painful situation and new normal very well in Nirvana. There were a couple tech bits that felt odd to me. Most of which were eventually resolved to some degree, the one part that wasn't resolved still remained interesting. But the thing that sold me on this particular story and what has me eager to read more is that the struggle to cope felt realistic. This definitely isn't a peppy, feel-good short. It doesn't offer snappy one-liners that highlight a sense of empowered and inspired zen in the face of struggle. It meets these characters where they are and it acknowledges that there's a whole hell of a lot that sucks about where they are right then. Johnson acknowledges how coping takes different forms for everyone and, in the end, it really doesn't matter whether we get what works for someone else. What matters is that we care enough about the people in our lives to respect what works for them. To do whatever we might be able to in order to support that person and reach out to them where they're at instead of where we think they should be.

    Peppy fluff bits can be pretty easy to dash off and even easier to consume. Spotlighting the realities of this kind of situation to the degree Johnson has been able examples a range of empathy that feels very enticing. I'll definitely be picking up this book to read more of Johnson's work.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Interesting fact: Toucan cereal bedspread to my plunge and deliver. It’s okay if you can’t make sense of that. I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t grasp it, either. The most vital things we hide even from ourselves.
    The topic of dead wives actually came up not too long ago. My husband and I talked about it while walking home from a literary reading. It was San Francisco, which means winter rains, and we’d just attended a reading from a local writer’s short-story collection. The local writer was twentysomething and sexy. Her arms were taut, her black hair shimmered. And just so you’re clear, I’m going to discuss the breasts of every woman who crosses my path.
    This paragraph marked the first moment that I knew I was falling in love with Fortune Smiles, the excellent new book of short stories by Adam Johnson (author of The Orphan Master's Son). Because we all should read more great #shortstories.

    What's most impressive about this collection, I think, are the voices. I often shy away from obvious tearjerkers and from obviously dark stories, and yet these took me into the lands of sadness and despair without abandoning me there. I am not one typically to pick up a story about a wife dying of cancer, or about a husband losing his wife to the same; nor am I even one to seek out the more exotic darknesses of a concentration camp warden's memories, let alone an unwilling pedophile's secrets. And yet I followed Johnson into these places willingly, and was richly rewarded for my trouble. As a parting gift, a story set in South Korea reminds us of how deftly he portrays the difficult tensions between North and South Korea.

    In short: read this, even if it doesn't sound like your usual fare.



    Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my unbiased review.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fortune Smiles is six short stories about all different kinds of lives and the good and bad fortune people experience, usually at the same time. Each story is pretty good and shows how complex people and life can be in a short amount of pages that many longer books never come close to capturing. Also each story holds its own, there wasn't one I was like oh ok that was weak compared to the rest. They were all interesting and held me in.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This week I gave up on a book. I wish it was this one; instead it was Emperor of All Maladies. That is a really good book, it’s just too dense. So I turned my eye to this, because I’m going to be discussing it with other folks at book club in a week.

    Man, it was bad. Not ‘Cinderella’s Diary’ or whatever that awfulness was a couple of years ago, but still bad. Yet somehow it has a 4-star rating on Good Reads. How is this possible? It’s SO BAD.

    Now, I really don’t ever read short stories, so I don’t know – is every story supposed to sort of end with no resolution? Do they always feel kind of pointless? I know that novels sometimes end without resolution, but usually there’s at least enough time throughout the novel to build characters to the point that I care.

    I don’t *think* anything connects these stories, although maybe five of the six could be characterized as about people who are stuck in the past. The rest of the review includes spoilers (I guess), so read on if you like. If not, just take my word and skip this one.

    Nirvana – Man’s wife is temporarily but possibly permanently paralyzed, is obsessed with Kurt Cobain. Husband has built some sort of virtual reality allowing everyone to talk to a recently assassinated president. The technology writing is laughably inaccurate, the characters aren’t fleshed out at all. It was a quick read because it felt like it was written by a teenager. 1 star.

    Hurricanes Anonymous – Man had already lost everything. Then hurricane Katrina happens. Then his ex leaves his son with him. He leaves to get a car from his dying dad. Maybe forever? Unclear. This one had more potential so I was ultimately disappointed. 2 stars.

    Interesting Facts – Woman has breast cancer and almost dies. PLOT TWIST. She’s already dead. 2 stars.

    George Orwell was a Friend of Mine – This one had the most potential to me, and felt the most developed. Former prison warder from East Germany doesn’t really think he did anything wrong. Kind of ends up cracking up. Weirdest part was the sort of glossed over fact that he apparently raped his passed out wife every night of their marriage. 3 stars.

    Dark Meadow – Oh this guy is a pedophile (but he only LOOKS at the pictures, guys) who was abused as a child. More tech writing that is probably crap. Creepy as FUCK. 1 star.

    Fortune Smiles – Two men who defected from North Korea. 1 star.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Ok, from a literary standpoint, I get why this is a National Book Award winner... but wow. Never have I felt so beat up after reading a book of short stories. Each one of these pulls you into the life of an incredibly hard and tragic situation: a husband who's wife is in a coma, a dad who's toddler child was dumped in his UPS truck when the custodian mom is incarcerated, a mom dying of breast cancer, the administrator of WWII's Hohenschonhausen prison facing contemporary attitudes toward his life's work, an abused boy turned child-pornographer trying to self-rehab, and an accidental defector from North Korea struggling with life in Seoul. The writing and research behind each of these stories is incredibly impressive to have created such absorbing and realistic environments, but now I need to move on to something much lighter!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a truly impressive collection of short stories. Each one is strong and unexpected in its own poignant way. I skimmed the story, "Dark Meadow" because the main character's perspective is a bit too much for me to stomach. Still, I am blown away by Johnson's ability to create a sense of place and write from such unique and varied perspectives. In most collections I read, there are only one or two particularly strong stories, but in this book, every story offers something valuable (maybe except for the one I skimmed) and conceptually innovative. All that is to say nothing of the writing itself, which is effortless and lovely.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not very satisfying group of stories.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Everyone of the stories is this collection is quirky, unique and disturbing. There are little bits of hope sprinkled throughout, but mostly things are grim. (Probably best to read this book when you have some emotional reserves, and aren't going to fall into despair at the state of humanity.) So, I was going to read this slowly, and spread the stories out over the month. But every time my eyes fell on the first sentence, I had to keep reading until the end. It's genius.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the first piece I have read by Johnson and his talent(s) are formidable. He can write about anything or anywhere with great authority. New Orleans after the flood, North Korean defectors in Seoul, everything is immaculately researched. Johnson likes to give himself an extraordinarily dramatic set up. A husband dealing trying to have sex with his paralyzed wife, the warden of a Stasi torture prison, with the exception of the title story you are thrown in and coping with horrendous situations right out of the box. Johnson is also as pitch black as you can get. He often favors starting with a stance or character so unlike the one you would expect like the self abuse victim who is a pedophile or as above the warden of a torture prison in East Germany. The stories can be difficult to read and the first two suffered from too much separation of mood and tone. That is the dark material was treated almost glibly which was meant to signal the character's difficulty with the material but it came off not as a defense but as distractingly snarky. However the story that is a standout and the reason that he is so remarkable is George Orwell is A Friend of Mine about the Stasi prison. It is emotionally very very powerful. I'm ready for more but couldn't read him back to back.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The stories are really haunting, especially "George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine" and "Fortune Smiles".
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This book takes you to horrible extremes of human existence, to places nobody should want to go. Reading it makes my mind feel soiled. Yuck.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Interesting subjects and characters. Very touching.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Ok, from a literary standpoint, I get why this is a National Book Award winner... but wow. Never have I felt so beat up after reading a book of short stories. Each one of these pulls you into the life of an incredibly hard and tragic situation: a husband who's wife is in a coma, a dad who's toddler child was dumped in his UPS truck when the custodian mom is incarcerated, a mom dying of breast cancer, the administrator of WWII's Hohenschonhausen prison facing contemporary attitudes toward his life's work, an abused boy turned child-pornographer trying to self-rehab, and an accidental defector from North Korea struggling with life in Seoul. The writing and research behind each of these stories is incredibly impressive to have created such absorbing and realistic environments, but now I need to move on to something much lighter!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    As the author of one of my favorite novels of all time, 'The Orphan Master's Son', I thought it was time to delve into more of his writing (I also loved 'Parasites Like Us'). These longer stories are fairly dark, including one that spends time in the head of someone I'd rather not spend time with. Many of these stories feature characters that aren't great human beings, and otherwise very sad situations. Very gutsy, I'd say, especially as one story seems to be very autobiographical. The writing seemed breezy and flowy to me, for some reason. I liked seeing another story about North Korea-- it put 'The Orphan Master's Son' in another perspective. I'd say these stories are similar to another favorite of mine, T.C. Boyle - he likes putting his characters through the ringer.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Engaging and Different

    Each story was engaging and thought-provoking. Johnson really knows how to affect the reader's psyche. I can't stop thinking about the characters. Each character represented some dark part of the human sprit..perhaps something we all fear. There was always a fine line between reality and what is plausible.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Well-crafted, thought-provoking stories from the author of The Orphan Master's Son.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    (AUDIO) - A collection of 6 short stories from the author of The Orphan Master's Son. It won the National Book award for fiction in 2015One of the stories, called Nirvana, is about a man who makes a hologram entity of the recently assassination of the President and releases it on the internet to help comfort the nation. He finds he has more of a connection to the hologram than he does to his paralyzed wife, who lives for Kurt Cobain and the music of Nirvana. Another interesting story is Interesting Facts (pun intended). Its about a woman author who is married to a Pulitzer prize winning author who wrote an acclaimed book about North Korea. She dreams about having cancer, but does she? She seems to be fading, and is frustrated with her husband using a characcter from one of her stories in his.A very interesting collection. I think Johnson is now on my list of goto authors.8/10S: 6/5/16 - F: 6/15/16 (11 Days)
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This book was never received.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The most important short story collection since Tenth of December. In the six long almost novella length stories, Johnson displays an jaw-dropping range. He is able to cast himself as a slightly unsympathetic spouse in Interesting Facts. He is able get his readers to sympathize with East German prison wardens and an adult pedophile struggling to deal with his own history of abuse. These stories cannot be ranked. Each one is more astonishing than the next.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Adam Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize for "The Orphans Masters Son". It is hard to follow up something like that but he has exceeded himself in this collection of 6 almost novella length stories. The topics are varied but each deals with tough issues that may make the reader uncomfortable but give you an insight into areas that you may not go. One story" Dark Meadow" deals with an adult child porn addict who was victim of child abuse. Somehow Johnson is able to make this character sympathetic. He also gets into the head of the former warden of an East German prison who believes he was justified in his actions. The writing is excellent. Johnson is a teacher at Stanford and lives in San Francisco. Hopefully, I will one day get to see him at a book reading. This book is on the short list for the National Book Award. Having just read " Fates and Furies" which is also on the list, I must stay that this is a better book. Probably the best book that I have read this year.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Six stories dealing with gritty triumphs in wretched situations, written in simple prose with a strong pulse. For example: "For someone who grew up as she did, Relle's the best possible version of herself." This phrase could be applied to most of the main characters in this collection.

    Thanks, Darwin, for your review. I had read "The Orphan Master's Son" and was glad to know Adam Johnson had a new book. Johnson takes us to a dark place but hints at a way out.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Rather than reading, I listened to this on audio, which always manages to keep me from getting too emotionally invested in the story. I think I may have done myself a disservice this time, as this collection of stories is beautiful, haunting, and heartbreaking. Johnson explores different means of coping (or not coping) with tragedy/hardship, with hints of redemption and resolution.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Thank you Goodreads for a copy of Fortune Smiles, a collection of short stories by Adam Johnson. It has taken me awhile to decide what I wanted to write in my review of this book. I've come to the conclusion that I was somewhat disappointed in the book as I really liked only three of the six stories. While I enjoyed "Interesting Facts" and "Hurricanes Anonymous" my favorite was "George Orwell Was A Friend of Mine", the story of a former East German Stasi prison worker who is in denial about his past. I will say that all of the stories are equally well written and imaginative and that perhaps the stories I did not care for were more because of the subject matter as in the case of child pornography in "Dark Meadow". If Mr Johnson's goal was to make you uncomfortable reading this particular story, he was quite successful.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I skipped and skimmed and didn't like a single one of these stories. I was about to give up on it when it was long-listed for the National Book Award. I decided to give it another try, still didn't find anything to like.Library book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Short stories seem to have once again surged in popularity, if one is to go by the many that have been published this year. Seems more and more novelists are either turning or returning to this form. I have never read Johnson's novel so this is my first experience with his writing and it was a successful one. Some of these stories were exceptional, but there really wasn't one I didn't like.The themes of technology and imprisonment are a common theme among many in this eclectic collection. How we live with, how it can interfere or how we can use it for solace. Imprisonment in ones' own body, in a communist regime or in an actual prison also covers three of the stories. In the title story the author returns to North Korea to tell the story of three asylum seekers in South Korea. They have escaped for various reasons, the twist is that one of them misses North Korea and wants to go back. If he will, why and how he will is the story. All in all am very good collection, super writing and a wide range of locales. ARC from NetGalley.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Well written, interesting, creepy, North Korea, child abuse, sickness
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    ( I haven't received this book from the August "Early Reviewers" batch. I was able to check it out of my public library, thank god.) Adam Johnson is now firmly ensconced in my 'top five authors' list. The Orphan Master was a fantastic novel (and a Pulitzer winner) and now I'm here to sing the praises of his superb short stories in 'Fortune Smiles'. This book received the 2015 National Book Award for fiction, an especially big deal for a short story collection. It's hoped that this kind of hoopla will help bring more and more readers to his writing.Johnson is an intelligent, graceful, dark, and gorgeous writer. He's willing to go to places that are funny, scary, futuristic, violent, or elegant, and it works due to his skillful use of language and imagination. He has been quoted as saying that he believes writers must often place themselves entirely outside of their own experience to gain a more truthful outcome. Storytelling contributed to his own self-awareness and "the distance of fiction" allowed him "to get to know the stranger of myself." Yep, there is some strange stuff but it is fascinating.Of these six stories, several stood out for me and won't be forgotten anytime soon. "Nirvana," is about a computer programmer whose wife who suffers from a terrible paralyzing disease. She escapes into Kurt Cobain's music and he (and other people) escape by conversing with a hologram of an assassinated American president. "Dark Meadows" is an insanely well-written, dark story about a computer hacker/repairman with pedophilic tendencies. "George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine," is about a former East German prison warden who remembers things in his own unique way. "Fortune Smiles" is about two North Koreans who have defected to the south in body but not in mind.Johnson is the Phil and Penny Knight Professor of Creative Writing at Stanford. Lucky students! He teaches courses in fiction and creative nonfiction and he founded the Stanford Graphic Novel Project. The project's goal is getting students "to tell real-world stories and give voice to those who might otherwise go unheard in the hopes of doing good, seeking justice and bringing about change." Good news for the future of writing. And I, for one, am looking forward to the next thing that Adam Johnson does and continue to be grateful for the true power of fiction.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fortune Smiles is six short stories about all different kinds of lives and the good and bad fortune people experience, usually at the same time. Each story is pretty good and shows how complex people and life can be in a short amount of pages that many longer books never come close to capturing. Also each story holds its own, there wasn't one I was like oh ok that was weak compared to the rest. They were all interesting and held me in.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Amazing, every story will stay with you! Great multiple readers.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I love to read, I read for pleasure, I read to step out of my comfort zone and I read because some people just put words together so darn well. These short stories fit the bill. One story in particular was a bit intense, I?m surprised I got through it. But like I said, some people just put words together so darn well.