Overview:
In six masterly stories, Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. “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. “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. 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.
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.
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Review:
Fortune Smiles is not at all the short story collection I was expecting. With topics ranging from cancer to the prisons of East Germany, it's certainly not a lighthearted read. While the topics were sometimes uncomfortable, at least they elicited a response. I found the short story Fortune Smiles, where this collection gets its name, to be the strongest. Dark Meadow was a bit too disturbing, and Nirvana fell a bit flat. Overall, I didn't feel the characters were developed in any way that garnered sympathy or understanding. I wasn't emotionally invested in any of them.
