Fortune Smiles
by Adam Johnson
DETAILS:
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: August 18, 2015
Format: Hardcover
Length: 301 pg.
Read Date: February 5-19, 2024
If that doctor’s right, Nonc’s dad is going to die for sure this time. But the truth is, it’s just an event. Life’s full of events—they occur and you adjust, you roll and move on. But at some point, like when your girlfriend Marnie tells you she’s pregnant, you realize that some events are actually developments. You realize there’s a big plan out there you know nothing about, and a development is a first step in that new direction.
What’s Fortune Smiles About?
This is a collection of short stories—longer than most short stories I end up talking about here, but not novella length by any means. I’m not remotely sure how to describe the book or the themes as a whole…I guess I could steal that line from Semisonic, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” These stories occupy the overlap of the new beginning and the end of the other beginnings.
Nirvana
Loss. Personal Grief. Dealing with disease, AI, and national grief. It was funny and gut-wrenching at the same time. I didn’t expect effective and affecting speculative fiction to start this collection (I honestly didn’t know what to expect, but definitely not that), but it was a dynamite start and raised my expectations for the rest.
Hurricanes Anonymous
This is not your typical post-natural disaster story. I don’t know what to say beyond that. I mean, I guess you could say there are somethings that are worse than the devastation a hurricane leaves in its wake—and we see at least one example of it here.
Other than to note the above quotation, the only thing I wrote about this was “I really don’t know what to think of it, but I’m glad I read it.” That kind of applies to the collection as a whole, but it really describes my reaction to this story.
Interesting Facts
This was hard to read—the emotions are so raw. This story is about the collapse of a marriage and the damage cancer wreaks—on the lives of the person with it and those around them.
George Orwell was a Friend of Mine
Years after the fall of the Berlin Wall—and everything that went with that—we spend some time watching the former Warden of a Stasi prison. His wife has left him, his adult daughter is having questions about him, and he’s still trying to adjust to the world he finds himself in and what the world thinks of his former career.
This was powerful stuff. I don’t know what else to say—for the longest time, you find yourself pulling for a guy you’d typically think was a monster (thankfully, while never thinking he was a stand-up guy). And then…well, maybe your perspective shifts a bit.
Darkness Falls
I could not finish this one—I’m willing to believe that there’s a decent ending to this, and there was a compelling reason to deal with this amount of darkness. But, I just couldn’t finish it because of the subject matter.
Fortune Smiles
This story is about a couple of North Korean men who defected to the South (one willingly, the other possibly less-so). Culture shock isn’t the right way to describe what they’re going through. I hope this doesn’t come across as dismissive—but it’s almost like Brooks Hatlen’s time after being paroled in The Shawshank Redemption, that’s the quickest way I have to describe their adjustment.
This story is just stunningly good, and it makes sense that the collection is named for it.
So, what did I think about Fortune Smiles?
This wasn’t a collection I could sit down and read back-to-back stories in. Frequently I had to take a day or more off between them (and sometimes I ended up taking more for other reasons)—Allyson Johnson’s recent WWW Wednesday comments* indicate that I’m not the only one who reacts this way.
* I’m expecting her to tell me how wrong I am about “Darkness Falls,” incidentally.
The stories, the points of view, the characters, circumstances, etc., etc., etc. are so varied from story to story that it’s hard to consider them as a collection. But here’s a few takeaways:
- Adam Johnson can write. Seriously great stuff.
- Adam Johnson will make you think. Particularly about things you haven’t spent (much?) time on before or actively try to stay away from.
- Adam Johnson will make you feel all sorts of things that you didn’t expect.
- Adam Johnson will not take a story where you expect or necessarily want him to. Until it’s over and you’ll regret your earlier dissension.
- Did I mention that this man can write?
I don’t know what else to say beyond that I’m glad Allyson put this on my radar, and I’m definitely recommending 5/6 of this to you all.
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allysonyj
So pleased you took on Adam Johnson’s collection, you share my dumbfounded admiration for Johnson’s writing, and your comments on each story echo my thoughts very closely! “Darkness Falls” is indeed very dark, and a happy ending is not assured. I happen to know well a couple of people who have been involved with illicit pornography and this story was a window into that world – which, yes, I would prefer did not exist, would be nicer not to know about, but then, if you don’t see what’s broken, how can you attempt to fix it?
If there is a theme in these stories, maybe it’s about the characters’ more or less successful attempts to fix what’s broken.