Book review: Adam Johnson’s Fortune Smiles is a disturbing collection of six unforgettable stories
This National Book Award winner deserves every accolade as it chronicles, subtly and precisely, the ways people handle the vagaries of fate
by Adam Johnson
Random House
If the best stories are the works that dig their way into your brain and refuse to come out, then Adam Johnson’s new collection has truly earned its accolades. The six lean, disturbing, unforgettable works in Fortune Smiles, which won the US National Book Award for fiction in November, are distinct and unique, each a perfect marvel of subtlety and precision, each devastating in its own way. But they’re united in their ability to linger in your consciousness.
Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel about North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son, and so the award for Fortune Smiles comes as no surprise. What is a welcome revelation is Johnson’s adept handling of the shorter literary form. His restrained but haunting stories examine loss through the eyes of characters ravaged by loneliness and isolation. They’re all at the crossroads, struggling to take the next step.
Nonc, a UPS driver trying to rebuild his life after Katrina and Rita in “Hurricanes Anonymous”, has the idea he understands how life works: “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 realise that some events are actually developments.”