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The Orphan Master's Son

Adam Johnson

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What Members Thought

Mar 31, 2012 Sam rated it it was ok

Shelves: setting-asia-east, read-2012, 1-contemp-literary, reviewed, tournament-of-books13, setting-n-s-korea

For most people who see North Korea as a mysterious black hole, I can understand how they would find this book refreshing and how they “learned” something from it. I am more familiar with NK defectors’ stories of survival than the average person, so this NK angle alone wasn’t an interesting enough novelty that could compensate for the story’s flaws. Johnson’s a good writer and I found the world that he creates convincing—no doubt informed totally by his interviews with NK defectors. The Orwellia For most people who see North Korea as a mysterious black hole, I can understand how they would find this book refreshing and how they “learned” something from it. I am more familiar with NK defectors’ stories of survival than the average person, so this NK angle alone wasn’t an interesting enough novelty that could compensate for the story’s flaws. Johnson’s a good writer and I found the world that he creates convincing—no doubt informed totally by his interviews with NK defectors. The Orwellian world could be NK or any other despotic country or alternate universe, so even if it doesn’t accurately capture NK in some people’s opinions, that’s still okay. It’s the plotting that I had a problem with throughout my reading. Keep in mind that I had my own set of (high) expectations for this book, so my harsh judgment is no doubt influenced by that.

More thoughts:

--Gorgeous language—I went back and re-read a lot of passages in the first quarter.

--Once they got to Texas, things fell apart for me. The set up didn’t ring true anymore—the dialogue was cheesy and the symbolism obvious. Texas was also when he began to set up the main action with Commander Ga and that’s when I started to get bored with the book. I liked it better when it was about this one individual and his survival. This is personal preference. The “love” story was unconvincing and hackneyed and the thriller plot wasn’t very thrilling. And to have that boring plot told through 3 different POVs was unnecessary.

--Long-winded. I get that everything is supposed to be surreal and absurd—Orwellian, as other readers kept pointing out—but I can’t take surreal and absurd when it goes on and on and on and on and on. The author could have explored his themes of identity, myth-making, relationship between (and gaps in) truth and propaganda without having to drag it all out so much. I pretty much got bored once he got to the interrogation center and the point of view split into the nameless interrogator, the propaganda person, and Jun Do. There was no suspense, and I was looking forward to the end just to be put out of my agony and not because I was so excited to see what would happen. When I saw that I had the last 10 pages left to read, I felt like I was going to die from having to read them in order to finish. There was one sequence in which Sun Moon was playing her instrument the night before the great escape that especially drove me bananas.

--In the interview with the author, which is included at the end of the book, he says that he treated the novel as a “trauma narrative,” in which different types of stories—adventure, bildungsroman, farce, love story, etc.—“collided” together. This smorgasbord didn’t work for me.
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Apr 24, 2013 Tyler Smith rated it it was amazing

One of the best books of the last decade, in my opinion, and one of the funniest. Sure, it's poignant, compelling, and it's got it's share of poetry. But I'm not lying, this, at least to me, was like a North Korean Confederacy of Dunces. Jun Do 4 LIFE. ...more

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