Fortune Smiles

Reviews

“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 insight 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 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)