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Fortune Smiles

Stories

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

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...

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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Don't let the title fool you: Darkness lingers in the stories in FORTUNE SMILES. Even the humor, which abounds, is dark and somewhat brooding. Each of the six performers brings an individual torch to illuminate the stories in unique ways, but leading the pack are Jonathan McClain and Cassandra Campbell. McClain opens the collection with "Nirvana," relating the protagonist's pain as he tends to his paralyzed wife in a performance both loving and resigned. Campbell walks us through the messy aftermath of a wife's double mastectomy in "Interesting Facts"; she is the only female narrator, but she pulls no punches in relating the pathos of the story. All the narrators are fine performers who do great justice to Johnson's painful, memorable stories. N.J.B. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      Starred review from April 15, 2016

      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 Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from June 22, 2015
      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.

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