Review
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“Masterful . . . Each [story] is a miniature demonstration of why
his remarkable novel The Orphan Master’s Son won the 2013
Pulitzer Prize for fiction.”—The Washington Post
“[Adam Johnson] is always perceptive and brave; his lines always
sing and strut and sizzle and hush and wash and blaze over the
reader.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Superb . . . explosive.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Remarkable . . . the best short story collection since Tenth of
December . . . Johnson is one of America’s greatest living
writers.”—The Huffington Post
“Haunting, harrowing . . . Johnson’s writing is as rich in
compassion as it is in invention, and that rare combination makes
Fortune Smiles worth treasuring.”—USA Today
“Fortune Smiles [blends] exotic scenarios, morally compromised
characters, high-wire action, rigorously limber prose, dense
thickets of emotion, and, most critically, our current
techno-moment.”—The Boston Globe
“Johnson’s boundary-pushing stories make for exhilarating
reading.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Entrancing.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“One of the most original and compelling voices in contemporary
American fiction.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Johnson packs more voice in his stories than most authors do in
a novel.”—Esquire
“Stunning . . . Johnson is a writer of uncanny in and
compassion and Fortune Smiles is a wise, poignant and important
book. It should not be missed.”—Toronto Star
“The best stories stretch well beyond their first and last words.
They’re more than the opening scene; they invite the reader to
imagine what came before and what will come after. They’re alive
and they’re limitless. That’s exactly what the best stories in
Fortune Smiles are like.”—NPR
“[A] bold and deeply wise collection.”—BuzzFeed
“Even as Johnson’s subject matter bends genre is a way that is
assertively contemporary, much of his prose is classically
beautiful. . . . The speculative fiction of Margaret Atwood and
David Mitchell, which also trade in inherited traumas and
personal resilience, come to mind, as do George Saunders’ darkly
satiric visions of near-future America.”—The New Republic
“Transfixing . . . The collection amply confirms Johnson’s
daring and talent.”—The Oregonian
“Excellent.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Johnson has a rare combination of inventiveness, intellectual
pyrotechnics and emotional sophistication. . . . These stories
are treasures.”—BBC
“Adam Johnson returns with this riveting collection of short
stories, each reflecting the darkly imagined, slightly surreal
point of view that animated his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The
Orphan Master’s Son. . . . He’s a compelling writer, in any
form.”—San Jose Mercury-News
“Startlingly, blazingly original.”—BookPage
“[Adam Johnson] serves up six sinewy stories that shock and
surprise in his edgy, inviting Fortune Smiles. . . . [They’re]
compulsively readable tales about characters whose lives are
largely ignored, undervalued, or simply uncharted and whose
voices we seldom hear.”—Elle
“The stories in Fortune Smiles fizz with imagination, miniature
worlds exploding onto the page. Adam Johnson’s prose is so
pared-down, like the setting for precious stones, he gives us
just what’s necessary to let the facets sparkle, without
distraction. I loved this book!”—M. L. Stedman, New York Times
bestselling author of The Light Between Oceans
“How do you follow a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel?
For [Adam] 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
rtunity 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)
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About the Author
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Adam Johnson is the author of Fortune Smiles, winner of the
National Book Award and the Story Prize and a finalist for the
Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The Orphan Master’s Son, winner
of the Pulitzer Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the
California Book Award and a finalist for the National Book
Critics Circle Award. Johnson’s other awards include a Guggenheim
Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for
the Arts Fellowship, and a Stegner Fellowship; he was also a
finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award. His
previous books are Emporium, a short story collection, and the
novel Parasites Like Us. Johnson teaches creative writing at
Stanford University and lives in San Francisco with his wife and
children.
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