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A review by nakedsushi
The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
3.0
The Orphan Master's Son is first about storytelling and how to define truth. The Orphan Master's Son is second about North Korea. A very distant second. After reading the book, it seems like North Korea was just a convenient setting for Adam Johnson to use for his stories.
I had many problems with this book from the start. Something about the characters and the setting felt off. No, not in a "North Korea seems so foreign and authoritarian" kind of way. More like a "this is a story about North Koreas starring Americans playing Koreans. The dialogue and the way the characters responded to events rang false. I haven't met a whole lot of North Koreans, but I known a fair number of Americans and the key characters in here were very American.
My other problem with the book was that it dragged on toward the end of the first half and most of the second half. The main reason I put off finishing the book was that I was just bored of waiting for the story to pick up its pace again. I appreciated how Johnson made Il's North Korea seem like some dystopian state straight out of 1984, but I also found his writing heavy-handed.
The book wasn't exactly a pleasant read either. There are many heart-breaking things that people have to endure and what makes it worse is that even though it's fiction in the book, I know that real people have really to go through the same things and worse. It's not something you really relish thinking about.
If the Orphan Master's Son had been paced better, I would have said that the ending redeemed the rest of the book, but it's hard to say that after slogging through the whole middle section. I had been waiting so long for the story to finally get back on track that by the time it came, I was just fed up.
I had many problems with this book from the start. Something about the characters and the setting felt off. No, not in a "North Korea seems so foreign and authoritarian" kind of way. More like a "this is a story about North Koreas starring Americans playing Koreans. The dialogue and the way the characters responded to events rang false. I haven't met a whole lot of North Koreans, but I known a fair number of Americans and the key characters in here were very American.
My other problem with the book was that it dragged on toward the end of the first half and most of the second half. The main reason I put off finishing the book was that I was just bored of waiting for the story to pick up its pace again. I appreciated how Johnson made Il's North Korea seem like some dystopian state straight out of 1984, but I also found his writing heavy-handed.
The book wasn't exactly a pleasant read either. There are many heart-breaking things that people have to endure and what makes it worse is that even though it's fiction in the book, I know that real people have really to go through the same things and worse. It's not something you really relish thinking about.
If the Orphan Master's Son had been paced better, I would have said that the ending redeemed the rest of the book, but it's hard to say that after slogging through the whole middle section. I had been waiting so long for the story to finally get back on track that by the time it came, I was just fed up.